I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.

Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

Ideas come to people who are receptive to them.

It's the easiest thing in the world to know God's will. You just wait and see what happens, and that's it.

If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.

I can't persuade myself that one of the problems facing the planet today might be a shortage of books by me.

Every year there's a few more things I'm not sure of. I've decided that a wide-ranging uncertainty is the mark of the true maturity of man.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

Why on earth should I care whether people read me with their eyes or their ears?

No Scripture comes from any Supreme Creator.

Life is science.

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

So at some point you realize that your life is not just going to start one day in the future, that you're living it.

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. Saki Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

A change of work is a good rest for the mind if you're constantly focused on writing. I like to work with timber and be creative on that side sometimes as well.

I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.

I'm not a perfect song writer, but I am song writing problems with dynamics, instrument change and arrangements.

My friend Winnie is a procrastinator. He didn't get his birth mark til he was eight years old.

A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you're talking about.