The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

Well, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!

One of my favorite songs from the album is a song called 'For Better or Worse,' and it's basically about unconditional love, which is, I'd say, an ongoing theme in my personal life.

Censorship makes me really angry. I even hate it when people censor themselves.

All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

You are the ruler of a kingdom, and whatever you think and feel becomes the law of your kingdom -- the law within your body.

I believe a good leader brings out the best in people by listening to them, trusting in them, believing in them, respecting them and letting them have a go.

On a single day, I read articles where I was described as being alternately 'lanky,' 'pudgy,' 'doughy,' 'balding,' 'utterly forgettable,' and 'constantly irritating.

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.