The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

Stand up for yourself by not standing yourself up.

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

Fate is a cruelly sweet fruit.

In the darkest of nights, there is only one thing on your mind--should I be required to stand before the Almighty, will I find myself in His favor?

Jim Leighton is looking a sharp as a tank

Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.

And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.

It's nice to see a movie where people are actually succeeding.

We had to move forward after the war and see the realities.

All your dreams are made / When you're chained to the mirror and the razor blade