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

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

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.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

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

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

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.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

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 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’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

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.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

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.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

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

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.