Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

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

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

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.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

I read a lot when I’m travelling and always have a couple of books on the go.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

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

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight. I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You’re not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I’m going to emerge then submerge.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

I’ve never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have any newspapers or magazines to read.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

Electronic books are junk.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I don’t generally read reviews.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

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.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

My first popular book, ‚A Brief History of Time,‘ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

What I’d really like to control is not machines, but people.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.

F2 cars have downforce; they’re quick. But it’s difficult for your brain and eyes to keep up with everything that’s going on once you’re in an F1 car. You get used to it and you learn to stay calm, because if you react too quickly the opposite will happen. Being more relaxed is when it becomes more natural and controlled.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Maleficent was always so elegant. She always was in control. And to play her was difficult. I worked on my voice a lot. She’s bigger than me. She’s on a different level of performance that I have never done.

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.