“I became an art major, took every art class my school had to offer. In college, I majored in Advertising Art and Design.”

“Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could.”

“It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision.”

“Lord of the Rings, I think, is far and away the most brilliantly done stuff.”

“I try to find what makes even the worst, most despicable character sympathetic at his or her core.”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“Were it my cue to fight, I should have known itWithout a prompter.”

“If your mind dislike anything obey it”

“Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

“Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.”

“All difficulties are easy when they are known.”

“Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliances are relieved, Or not at all.”

“Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.”

“Science finds it methods.”

“Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.”

“In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid”

“Her father lov'd me; oft invited me;Still question'd me the story of my life,From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,That I have pass'd.”

“Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact.”