I am, I get very happy. I go into a phase of satisfaction or joy or happiness when I’m writing. It’s painful, but I like the serenity that I get when I write. I can’t be doing it always, that’s why there are gaps. When I finish with the first draft, there is a time I don’t do any writing at all. But once I get into that phase, it’s a very rich, a very fulfilling phase of my life. So I look forward to it when it comes upon me again. I am very grateful. I write because it is an experience of joy and fulfillment.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.

My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.

I cannot recall a time when stories and rhymes and pictures and tunes were not for me the chief source of interest and pleasure in life. I stress the word pleasure. Pleasure has played a large part in my life; pleasure, solitary and sociable, carnal or spiritual; pleasure in the beauties of art and nature, in the enthralling variety of the human scene; and pleasure in jokes. Nothing has been included here, however interesting its subject matter, which does not also give me pleasure.

Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

Enjoying the taste of toasted raisin bread or the humor in a cartoon may not seem like much, but simple pleasures like these ease emotional upsets, lift your mood, and enrich your life. They also provide health benefits, by releasing endorphins and natural opioids that shift you out of stressful, draining reactive states and into happier responsive ones. As a bonus, some pleasures — such as dancing, sex, your team winning a game of pick-up basketball, or laughing with friends — come with energizing feelings of vitality or passion that enhance long-term health. Opportunities for pleasure are all around you, especially if you include things like the rainbow glitter of the tiny grains of sand in a sidewalk, the sound of water falling into a tub, the sense of connection in talking with a friend, or the reassurance that comes from the stove working when you need to make dinner.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.

True pleasure-joy, happiness and satisfaction-has been the force that helps us move beyond the constant struggle, that helps us live and generate futures beyond this dystopic present, futures worthy of our miraculous lives. Pleasure-embodied, connected pleasure-is one of the ways we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world.

We are actually programmed to get satisfaction and pleasure from discovery and creativity, he says, because its results lead to our survival as a species.

And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.