I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I mean, I wouldn’t pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I’m me.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

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 really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

Language is the dress of thought.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

‚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.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

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

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can’t really measure degrees of difficulty.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‚Let us pray.‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.