No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

I am the freest author in the world.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

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.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

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.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

And one more thing.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that’s odd, but I think it’s odd if artists aren’t interested in the world around them. I’m always chasing that.

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.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

I cannot live without books.

Syllables govern the world.

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.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

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

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 didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

We all have limitations. I don’t have the right genes to be an Olympic weightlifter. I don’t have the right genetics to be an Olympic sprinter. Or gymnast. Sure, if I trained my whole life, perhaps I could have become fairly decent in those sports.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

‚Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Love is the most powerful thing in the world, and you know, what love brings is joy.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

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.

I don’t read books much.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

The world remains ever the same.