Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

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.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

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.

I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting into tears. It wasn’t what I had imagined at all.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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 have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

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.

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

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

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.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

If you can talk, you can write.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

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 do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.

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

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

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

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

I don’t think of myself as a metafictional writer at all. I think of myself as a classic writer, a realist writer, who tends to have flights of fancy at times, but nevertheless, my feet are mostly on the ground.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

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