Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

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

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

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.

War is what happens when language fails.

Coffee is a language in itself.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

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

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our stereotypes of age, education, language and income.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

Empire and liberty.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

I’m the only president you’ve got.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

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.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can’t really measure degrees of difficulty.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.