I'm very cagey about making friends, and I rarely do.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

For me, a good friend is someone you might only see once or twice a year but each time it feels as though you've just seen them last week.

Drip, drip, the rain comes falling, Rain in the woods, rain on the sea; Even the little waves, beaten, come crawling As if to find shelter here with me.

To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.

Never underestimate the hypocrisy of politicians.

I hate violence, and I didn't plan to write horror; it just poured out of me.

I grew up in the East End of London, the youngest of three boys in a Catholic household. Both my parents were market traders and worked seven days a week.

I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate.

I've actually seen a ghost, so I know they're really around.

I'm terrible in the mornings, but I'm always at my desk by 10 A.M.

The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.

someday goals become never days of achievement

I don't have that much forward planning about what I want to do next, or in the future.

The day I was announced as CEO, I think the stock dropped another 20%.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.

Whether I shall be unfortunate depends also on others; whether I shall be unhappy depends only on myself.

Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty.

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to... spend some time looking out at this beautiful spaceship Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.