The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.

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.

We can achieve more in a moment of compassion than in an hour of anger.

Nil Sine Magno Labore ("Nothing without great effort") --Motto of Brooklyn College

And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.

Co-opted convictions will always betray you.

After school, I'd wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I'd be like, 'I guess I'll walk home.' I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.

To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.

To have a functioning body and not to use it is like having 20/20 vision and never opening your eyes.

I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.

We are exceptional not because of who we are but because of what we do and how we put the ideals of human dignity, individual freedom, and liberty under law into action.

Now I want to become an artist, rather than one thing, like a dancer, or a movie star, or a choreographer.