I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‚Automobile Magazine.‘ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

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

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

I never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.

As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, but the Bible also teaches that pride is a sin, jealousy is a sin, and hate is a sin, evil thoughts are a sin. So I don’t think that homosexuality should be chosen as the overwhelming sin that we are doing today.

Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

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.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

I write all of my own speeches.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

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

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

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

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

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

I realized quickly what Mandela and Tambo meant to ordinary Africans. It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

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.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I always have to be writing.

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.