It is not an easy thing to put on a wet sock.

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.

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

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.

You will know it is love not when you think about them all the time or want to be with them, but when you worry about them and you want their approval and happiness.

Dynasties rise and fall according to what the Chinese used to call ‘the mandate of heaven’, but life for the peasant changes little.

Well, dating has become a sport and not about finding the person you love.

Some jobs are so dirty you can only send in someone who has the finely honed hatred of liberals acquired at elite universities to do them.

I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn't raised that way, and I'm not going to raise a child to do that.

There is so much wonder and joy in science, about understanding how the world works and why the world is the way it is. It's not just for academics. It is a thing that's available to everyone.

I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible.

We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.

Everyone in my family is in the film business; I knew I wanted to be creative and it was important in my family to be artistic.

The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn