The decent thing to do is to get rid of some of this money.

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.

I give him the kind of smile only shared between two people who desperately hate something and thoroughly enjoy hating it together.

During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks.

Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches.

Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.

Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.

I've been to your mountains, I've been to your sea-side, and everywhere I went somebody's wanted a free ride.

Libertarianism is a theory of politics that is so compelling that once you have absorbed it, it becomes the lens through which you end up understanding all economic and political events.

The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.

I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.

The thing that is most important is to feel like you're at the front of the line, to be prime or primer. I definitely never wanted to say that in the films, but that's where it comes from.