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.

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.

Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

None of us need ever fear that we don't have an active imagination, because imagination is mostly a willingness to entertain a strange idea now and then.

Take pleasure in your dreams relish your principles and drape your purest feelings on the heart of a precious lover.

I talk, watch TV, spout opinions, schmooze, negotiate, talk some more, play games, and have a little cocktail.

When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.

I've never really been a traditional country kind of guy. I wanted my music to sound more like the end of the '90s and to have the kind of great music, pop or whatever, that radio will embrace.

Muhammad Ali: Superman Don't need no seat belt. Flight Attendant: Superman Don't need no airplane, either.

I wouldn't have a nose job. I like my nose fine.

When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever.

Tomorrow we begin a new tomorrow.