What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?

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.

Life on this planet on its own is temporal. So tell me why you think your problems are permanent. No condition is permanent.

I experience the age I am now as an age at which I must ensure that I already am what I insist or believe I am going to be.

I've always loved punk music, since I was in my early teens, since middle school.

Sometimes you have to search for inspiration with characters, and other times, they just drop out of the sky and arrive.

You wonder why I only talk about my personal life. But that's all I've ever done.

A sensible man ought to think about that well being is the best of human blessings, and find out how by his personal thought to derive profit from his sicknesses.

I really act for myself. I really love it. I don't think there's a way that you could handle these schedules, all of the actual work that goes into it, if you don't really, really love it.

Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst

My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.

The progress of the world through all its evils making it fit for the ideals, slowly but surely.