I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is.

My shows are not narratives.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

I like the idea of making a big, fun, adventure type of movie.

The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

I love trying new things.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

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

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

But in truth, should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

I have always loved blizzards, if only because of the driving experience – which is definitely an acquired taste.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

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

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

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

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

My father gave me some advice when I was very young – whatever someone tells you in the future, don’t forget Pele is the best.

Libraries raised me.

It’s not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

If you can talk, you can write.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

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‘.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.

To be able to travel the world, especially to places I never thought I’d be… it’s really, you know, still fascinating for me.