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.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

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.

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.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

I’m bloody awful at multi-tasking.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

It’s so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I’ve never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

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

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

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.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today’s winners are tomorrow’s blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

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.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

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.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.

I am not a consecutive writer.

A word after a word after a word is power.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

Lost time is never found again.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn’t do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence.

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.

Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.

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

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

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.

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.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I’ve felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people’s lives better.

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.

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.