Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

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.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

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.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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.

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.

If you can talk, you can write.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

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

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

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.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

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.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?