For me, it's always been the initial business - just getting a word down, any words down, on a blank piece of paper. Once I've done that, I'm away. Beginning is one half of the deed.

I write every day when I'm at home - trying to catch up with correspondence.

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse

I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

I think of myself as an ambassador of the arts. In my heart of hearts, I know the world would be a more peaceful, tender place if we were more moved by the poetry around us.

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.

I have a very low boredom threshold.

America needed recovery, not revenge. The hate had to be drained and the healing begun.

I'm really not feeling one way or the other with comedy or drama, I'm just sort of doing projects that I've been finding really fun to be a part of.

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

Animals are happier than humans because they're like furry little existentialists, all living in the moment. Their collective motto: live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking pelt.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.