As Cinderella would probably tell you, even a prince who only recognizes your footwear is preferable to a lifetime of cleaning grates.

The question is always the answer, provided you want the answer badly enough.

I simply don't shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.

I always wanted to be a writer but everyone kept telling me it was impossible to break into the field or make money. I've proven them wrong on both counts.

What is merely a hypothesis to anyone else is an overwhelming temptation to a wizard.

God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours.

We love people differently at different stages of our knowledge of them. As love changes its hape and its nature, we have to decide what we're going to do about that love on any given day.

One shouldn't allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one's arm.

You narrow hope when you define it.

You yourself must know how boring gravity is to oneself and everyone else.

Imagination is what has driven human progress since very early times.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.

I think there's a part when you sign your soul to the devil and start working in Los Angeles that you also sign away that you could be a human being in anyone's eye. You're like a robot!

In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

There are no hard times for good ideas.

The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.

The great secret behind classified projects is that most of them are so utterly boring and uninteresting that James Bond wouldn't even take a second look at them.

. . . Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded. . . .

I still have the actor's disease. I always think I'll never get another job.

My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.