Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

A wise man once said NOTHING... He just let her vent, nodded his head and live happily ever after!

The jealous know nothing, suspect much, and fear everything.

If you do nothing, that just empowers the gangs.

The essence of justice is mercy.

Sometimes the best cure for life’s woes is a sense of humor.

Thus, if armaments were curtailed without a secure peace and all countries disarmed proportionately, military security would have been in no way affected.

The force of the spirit is ever progressive and endless. Its full expression makes it unconquerable in the world.

I don't know if it's due to my age, that I'm older now, [but] I love the essentials. I don't like the things around us that are a kind of mirage.

I don't watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched 'The King's Speech' on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.