"

I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.

"

You have to be free to fail in this world.

"

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The...more

"

Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic...

"

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could havemade me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

"

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned n...more

"

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. ...more

"

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

"

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge y...more

"

Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.

"

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

"

Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.

"

I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.

"

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.

"

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that ...more