In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

I’m just changing the game because I know what the fans want and the people want ‚cause I’m a fan of hip-hop.

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

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

Too much TV hurts movies.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to – you know, rap stars and movie stars.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

It’s easy to forget who you are.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

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

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

A daily portion is really all we need. We do not need tomorrow’s supply, for that day has not yet dawned, and its needs are still unborn.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.