It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

My war had been so long, my winter so cold. But i had made it home. And for the first time in a long time, i was not afraid.

There's nothing more romantic than self-destruction.

Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . Sabbathless Satan!

Where I am right now I'm pretty good at. You know, I understand that there's a problem. I'm addressing it. I'm doing the work that I have to do.

Historically, the responsibility for voting on the debt limit has gone to the party in the majority.

The scandal happened and I made the best of it. I kind of feel like in the end it was a blessing.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

So I'm reading a book on my new iPad, but can't the iPad read it for me? Do I have to do everything?

I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you're a pessimist then that's depressing all the time; if you're an optimist and things don't work out then that's depressing, too.