The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

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

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

And one more thing.

If you can talk, you can write.

I am not one who – who flamboyantly believes in throwing a lot of words around.

I am the freest author in the world.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

‚The New Yorker‘ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

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

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

The more you know the less you need to say.

‚Good English‘ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

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.

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

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.