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.

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

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.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

What you are comes to you.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

Being is the great explainer.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

I’m a genetic optimist.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

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

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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

Fear is the mother of morality.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

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.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

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.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

I never looked at my mantel and envisioned an MVP trophy sitting there. This is pretty crazy.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.