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

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.

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.

Even blind alleys lead somewhere.

That's old world stuff. It's the ZA now.

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.

Story is important but the most important is the theme and how you're going to convey theme cinematically. I'm a believer also.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

. . .and the thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.

I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.

There are women who love their husbands as blindly, as enthusiastically, and as enigmatically as nuns their cloister.

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.

Fame! it is the flower of a day, that dies when the next sun rises.