The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

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

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

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

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say ‚first alarm clock‘ because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Well, I’m working all the time to stay out of trouble!

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

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?

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

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 a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

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

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

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’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

I’m most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page… sunrise over the desert and masses of… a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.

If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I feel like I might be a designer or stylist – or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

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

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Never regret what you don’t write.

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.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

You may delay, but time will not.

I’m not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.

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.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.