“I have no idea why some of my books draw awards and others don't, except that the ones I spent the least time worrying about other people's response to — that I wrote for myself — seem to do the best of all.”

Source: The Dear One

As quoted in C.S. Lewis (1963), by Roger Lancelyn Green, p. 9

Jace and Madame Dorothea, pg. 345
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text
Context: I can't tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it.

On his activism in social justice and peace issues.
2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are.

Source: "Gong Yoo talks life, death and 20 years in the business" in Korea JoongAng Daily https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2021/04/19/entertainment/movies/Gong-Yoo-actor-interview/20210419145803689.html (19 April 2021)

Quoted in "There is nothing like a dame: Dame Rebecca West at ninety," Vogue (February 1983)

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)