Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

I rather have you win, because in God even those who are in second place are first.

It takes about five years for a walnut tree to produce nuts but this is not true of a family tree.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads.

It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.

You don't gossip while your man is driving. You sit there quietly until you're about 5 minutes from your destination then you say, would you like some road head?

Gloriously false. [Like Rahab.]

Justice lacking passion fails, betrays.

Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up.

Los Angeles County government is a "Soviet-style system," with too many people only sort of in charge and no person sufficiently at the helm to take responsibility.