“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.”

You can make yourself happy or miserable – it’s the same amount of effort.

If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both-you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

You fail only if you stop writing.

You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

There’s no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.

I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it’s immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.

I don’t believe in government. I hate politics. I’m against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

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

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

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.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

You’ve been put on the world to love the act of being alive.

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

I’m pretty excited for people to listen to the story of each song. It’s definitely like a giant book with different stories in it. They are all very child-like but also a balance between light and dark.

I love ‘Harry Potter’ and JK Rowling – don’t laugh at me!

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.

A man armed with a rhyming dictionary is a dangerous man.

Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem myself happier than a king in his kingdom.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated.

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

Oh, you who are trying to learn the marvel of Love through the copy book of reason, I’m very much afraid that you will never really see the point.