I write all my sermons.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

People don’t realise how difficult it is to work with people day in and day out that know absolutely nothing.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Understanding is a two-way street.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

Smiles are the language of love.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

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

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

How can a president not be an actor?

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

I see fighters make funny videos about me and stick them on Facebook and get 20 likes. When I make a video, I sell it to Fox and make seven figures. That’s the difference.

A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

‚The New Yorker‘ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.