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.‘

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

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

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

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

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

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

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

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.

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.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

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.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

There appears to be something to do with vehicles and movement that stimulates my writing.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I like being a writer.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

And one more thing.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

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.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

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

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

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

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

All of my writing is God-given.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

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

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

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

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I write music every day.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.