I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

I like being a writer.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

You can stroke people with words.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter’s school fees.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

Language is the dress of thought.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that’s it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called ‚The Truth‘.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

I’m terrible at reading scripts. I love to read, and I hate reading scripts.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.