I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

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.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

I write all of my own speeches.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

It’s true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

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.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

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

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

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.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.

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

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

Genius, when young, is divine.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

I am completely fascinated by the differences and comparisons between real life and fairy tales because we’re raised as little girls to think that we’re a princess and that Prince Charming is going to sweep us off our feet.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever – was write novels.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

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.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.