Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

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.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

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

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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

I think the definition of a book is changing.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

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.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

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

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot – past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

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

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I create stars.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Energy begets energy.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

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?

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

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

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

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

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

I wake up every day inspiring myself, because God gave me life.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliche for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.