They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

It’s a frustrating game because the situations so drastically change at different times over the course of the week, the game, the season. It feels like brain surgery at times.

I have promised myself that I’m going to do everything I can for as long as I can.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

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

A word after a word after a word is power.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.

Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

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

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

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.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

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

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

You can stroke people with words.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

Success is not a stop sign.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

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

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.