When I was your age, television was called books.

— William Goldman

When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count-I mean something with print in it.

— William Goldman

Who are you?"" No one of consequence."" I must know."" Get used to disappointment.

— William Goldman

Who can know when his world is going to change? Who can tell before it happens, that every prior experience, all the years, were a preparation for. . . Nothing.

— William Goldman

Who can know when his world is going to change? . . . Who would suspect that in the morning a different child would wake? . . . Perhaps I should have at least known something, but maybe not; who can sense revelation in the wind? What happened was just this: I got hooked on the story. For the first time in my life, I became actively interested in a book. Me the sports fanatic, me the game freak, me the only ten-year-old in Illinois with a hate on for the alphabet wanted to know what happened next.

— William Goldman

Who says life is fair, where is that written?

— William Goldman

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.

— William Goldman

You could concentrate much more deeply when you were alone with agony.

— William Goldman

You don't want to be rude, but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there.(Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)

— William Goldman

You had to admire a guy who called his own new book a classic before it was published and anyone else had a chance to read it.

— William Goldman