Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Fear no more as long as her memory surrounds you like a ghost…cry no more as long as she weeps for you like a willow.

I have a lot of friends who, especially in Tennessee, were looking forward to getting married who wanted to wait until it was legal in the state that they live in to get married.

I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means

Hmmm, completely a-religious - atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both.

Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved

We hear the term independent contractors in Iraq. Independent contractors? Mercenaries!

We are developing all sorts of technologies based on what we have learnt from birds, animals and soils. Pollination is worth £billions. But it also highlights how nature is so interconnected.

We will always want films ... that basically are centred on young people, because young people is the way we live on, we older people, insofar as we live on.