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.‘

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

‚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.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

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

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

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.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

Whatever the reviewers feel about ‚The Casual Vacancy‘, it is what I wanted it to be, and you can’t say fairer than that as a writer.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

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.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

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.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

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.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I was saving the name of ‚Geisel‘ for the Great American Novel.

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.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

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

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I write all my sermons.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.