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

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

Get rid of those friends of yours who make fun of you and don’t believe in you. And when you leave here tonight, go home, make a phone call and fire them. Anyone that doesn’t believe in you and your future, to hell with them.

Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.

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

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.

Good to evil seems evil

If we try to deny the darkness in our souls then we’ll become completely dark.

Creativity is a continual surprise.

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.

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.

If you strive only to avoid the darkness or to cling to the light, you cannot live in balance. Try striving to be conscious of all that you are.

It doesn’t cost anything to say hi when you pass someone else in the hallway, whereas, most corporations if you pass you avoid eye contact.

We spend so much time avoiding death that we forget to take time to truly live.

Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.

Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships. It is actually the ability to use energy data to make decisions in the immediate moment.

Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits.

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.

I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters – people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them – not one – stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.