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

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

‚Border‘ was the first movie that I watched on the big screen. It always takes me back to my childhood.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

Self-respect knows no considerations.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

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

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

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Writing bores me so.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

I like being a writer.

It’s honestly true that money means nothing to me.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be in combat.

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

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

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.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

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.

If I can be a leader, I will.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Success has always been a great liar.

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.

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

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

I wish everyone well, but you need to focus on yourself. You need to stop putting your hand out. Everyone wants hand outs. Everyone wants things for free. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got go through the struggle, and you’ve got to get it.

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

You learn a lot in life but there are a lot of tools and resources in school that help you grow professionally and personally for whatever goal you may want to achieve.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

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.

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

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

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

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 grew up cursing a lot.

Power is competence.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.