No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Women can’t do everything at the same time, we need to understand milestones in our lives comes in segments.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

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.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

Delay is preferable to error.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

Getting organized in the normal routines of life and finishing little projects you’ve started is an important first step toward realizing larger goals. If you can’t get a handle on the small things, how will you ever get it together to focus on the big things?

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

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.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

I don’t write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time… I don’t want to just sit on my phone for hours.

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

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Riches don’t make a man rich, they only make him busier.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

I often work by avoidance.

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

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

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

We live in a time-crunched world, and just about everything we do seems to be urgent.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

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