I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.

The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.

I remember the past, and I learn from it. I rejoice and celebrate in the present, and I re-imagine the future. Now is the moment that never ends.

We have complicated every simple gift of the gods.

It is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

You should at all times be showing a well-motivated character overcoming obstacles in pursuit of a goal.

Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors.

I don't think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive.

When you first assemble a group, it's not a team right off the bat. It's only a collection of individuals

You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.'' "No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.