The biggest advice is being true to what you want to do. Don't worry if other people understand it or don't understand it. If what you're doing has merit, it will find its way.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.

The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.

If your religion is better than mine and your opinion, you have a real problem.

I just have to trust that the story is going to shake out in such a way that's going to be palatable to readers.

Science in itself is morally neutral; it becomes good or evil according as it is applied.

Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

I hate my stomach. It's impossible to get it flat, and the area around my belly button drives me crazy.

Constancy in a man is rare.

Be yourself. No one else can.

The strongest human emotion is probably love. I think it's universal. I think that across language and country and time and everything else, probably love.

I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity.

I listen to 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Stereophonics, Arctic Monkeys; also the musical Oliver - I can sing every tune.