The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

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?

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

All of my writing is God-given.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

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.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

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.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I think I’ve got my business notions and my sense for that sort of thing from my dad. My dad never had a chance to go to school. He couldn’t read and write. But he was so smart. He was just one of those people that could just make the most of anything and everything that he had to work with.

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.

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

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

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.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

I’m not in the business of ranking or debating who is what.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

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

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

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

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

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

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

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.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

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.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.