Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

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.

The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world’s best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 – with the goal of making flying good again.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam.

Competition gives me energy. It keeps me focused.

I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I’ll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don’t taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

I’m proud of ‚Stop Making Sense,‘ but it’s a little bit of an albatross; I can’t compete with it, but I can’t ignore it either.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Even the best and biggest teams in the world do not reach finals of tournaments.

Winning the title in England is the biggest challenge of them all.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

At United, there are great traditions, which you can’t buy in one or two years. They are created by victories. You need to prove again and again that you are better than the others. Manchester United have always done this, and are still doing it, so they are the best.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

My friend James Cameron and I made three films together – True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don’t do that.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

Even though I had won in other categories, I didn’t have any expectations when I came into F1. Qualifying fifth, finishing sixth? I didn’t expect it.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.

If music be the food of love, play on.

I grew up reading science fiction.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete.

There have been so many great players that I’ve played with, that I’ve played against over the years.

I don’t read books much.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

In my line of work, the enemy gets a vote.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.