The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

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

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

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

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

Many shoulder heavy burdens of righteous responsibility which, on occasion, seem so difficult to bear. I have heard those challenges termed impossible.

There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, ‚Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.‘

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

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.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

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.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

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

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

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

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

Many entrepreneurs do not realize that many of the problems their businesses face today began yesterday, long before there was a business.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

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.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

A word after a word after a word is power.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

The truth is, I’m just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challenges in his life.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

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

I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad: that it is our will that is being tried and not our strength; our sense of purpose and not our ability to achieve a better America.

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

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.