Author Quotes

The Internet has really democratized ideas. There are no real gatekeepers any more, because if you have a great idea, and you put it online, people will find it and it will get in front of who it needs to get in front of.

I'm not a guy who curses very much in my personal life. When I curse it sounds like a kid trying to be cool. But I think there are quite a few people, my father being one of them, who use curse words rather eloquently.

When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

Remote villages and communities have lost their identity, and their peace and charm have been sacrificed to that worst of abominations, the automobile.

All my roots are still in the prarie country of the Middle West.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.

When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he always gets angry.

To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

No one is rich whose expenditures exceed his means, and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.

Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

A college education shows a man how little other people know.

Punctuality is the soul of business.

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother's love.

No news is good news.

In order to make money the first thing is to have no need of it.

When writing isn't going well-then the bad thing about being a writer is that I also have the freedom and flexibility to do something badly, and no one else can fix it for me.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.

I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait.

I was lucky enough not to face any required summer reading lists until I went to college. So I still think of summer as the best time to read for fun.

I think I learned a lot from reading in general - even from reading badly written books.

I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.

I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me.

I like the fact that kids are willing to be imaginative and go along with me when I'm telling strange tales.