If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.

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.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

I'm a huge horror movie fan. Beyond belief.

We can never flee the misery that is within us.

Love all your different sides, only then will immortality come to you.

Tantra is quicker; but for some people it can be spiritually disastrous.

Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.

My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry.

Violence is not the way.

The petitioner's problem is to avoid Scylla without being drawn into Charybdis.