When a book leaves your hands it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

I have pretty thick skin and I think if you're going to be in this business if you're going to be an actor or a writer you better have a thick skin.

After I left the White House I kept a foothold in the business of American politics as a talk-show host analyst commentator speechmaker and occasional writer. I was no longer a practitioner but I was still a partisan a Democrat a blue-stater through and through.

I am a sensitive writer actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business call my disgusting personal manager.

The best writing is not about the writer the best writing is absolutely not about the writer it's about us it's about the reader.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

I know I'm not the best. I'm not the best singer I'm not the best songwriter I'm not the best player.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.