The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

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

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

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

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.

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if – the probable outcome is failure.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

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

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

I spend a lot of time reading.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

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!

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.

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

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

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.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

I think America has always been polarized.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: ‚We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.‘

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.