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

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

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

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.

I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.

My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

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.

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’ve read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I’ve read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I’m not a big reader.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

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.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

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. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

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.

Do not let circumstances control you. You change your circumstances.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

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.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

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

Our focus needs to be less on what our legacy’s going to be or how we can control each other and more how we can give to each other.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

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 don’t control my writing – it controls me.

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

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.

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

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

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

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

Because the Internet is so new, we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the Web.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

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

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

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

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

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?

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.