I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.

Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

Wyrd bith ful araed (Fate is inexorable).

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

We all suffer from dreams

Writing is a solitary occupation.

Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.

Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.

Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.

The existence of tricks does not imply the absence of magic.

We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.

God doesn’t put that much prep into something that is insignificant.

Can you see a serene island in the middle of a stormy ocean? And the wise man is that calm island!

I realise that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers.

Some people look 40 when they're 40. People look the way they're supposed to look at any age.

What is Mona Lisa thinking? Nothing, of course. Her blankness is her menace and our fear. [...] Walter Pater is to call her a 'vampire,' coasting through history on her secret tasks.

I love writing about people on the road.

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin born, because the answer to that question would define history.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.