The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

They (low-minded) ones should never be trusted.

But surely Adam cannot be excused; Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame; What weakness offered, strength might have refused, Being lord of all, the greater was the shame.

I was trying to capture this man's [Idi Amin] energy, and I did a lot of research in studying him. I tried to capture his 'Warrior King' energy inside of me as much as possible.

First, in a love song, or any song for that matter, using a plastic word like "inhibitions" is just completely without feel or texture. It demonstrates a tin ear for communication.

I have noticed that music, like solid matter, is essentially crystalline in structure.

The twilight that surrounds the border-land of old romance.

My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

God has put into the heart of man love and the boldness to sue, and into the heart of woman fear and the courage to refuse.

There are times in show business when you work so much you think you will pop your cork, and then suddenly you can't find any work.

I don't pick the roles. Your agent gets a call for you and you go and they all get together, everybody has fun at the reading, and they say, "There's chemistry here." So that's how it happens.