I was a 'Planet of the Apes'-obsessed kid.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

Space has no top, no bottom; in fact, it is bottomless both at the bottom and the top.

In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.

Genuine [economic] value lies in the power to sustain or enrich life

God never occurs to you in person but always in action.

Ive worked really physically hard, and I was never afraid of working hard as younger bloke.

You aren't afraid of throwing yourself in the path of danger, but you're terrified of letting anyone in.

What is shocking and wrong is not [Lord Devlin's] idea that the community's morality counts, but his idea of what counts as the community's morality.