Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.

I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.

It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir.

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction.

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

To do something for someone or something you loved-England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history-wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

The main recipients of injustice in any society are the afflicted the distressed and the troubled one, both in soul and in body.

You can only become great through the power of time conversion.

As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in the world he cannot really appreciate the world around him.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

I really felt that I had accomplished my goals in life. My first passion has always been to be a restaurateur, a good husband and father, and to provide for my family.

The crises in North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, show how quickly things can change and how they can go wrong. We must be prepared. And right now the Army is not.

I love the figure to get across what I feel.

She did not use it at all well mostly.

We can proceed according to the planned itinerary, strenuously trying to make life conform to our needs, or we can adapt to whatever we meet and flow without effort.

I didn’t want to kill girls… even vampire girls. Though I might make an exception for that blonde.