When you choose to look down on something, you render yourself incapable of understanding it.

Faith is blind belief. Atheism is blind disbelief. No one has all the information needed to take up such fixed positions.

Human knowledge is but a ripple on the water's surface. To go deeper, we must accept the fact that we don't know everything

Ah, sleep, clothe me in thy velvet cloak.

Great leaders lead by example, not by making an example of others.

The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.

For even in the pit of darkness, the beacon of humanity can always shine through.

There's nothing man can imagine that nature hasn't already created a zillion times better.

The bravest thing David Bowie ever did was to go on stage after Queen at Live Aid.

Fantasy is a reaction to the constraints of reality.

Writing is a series of verbal suggestions designed to provoke a psychological reaction and an aesthetic experience.

There's a thin line between genius and bottom-barrel stupidness. I hover delicately on a tightrope between the two, wondering where I'll land if I'll ever fall.

Through our reading we can travel to other times and other places, into other peoples minds and hearts and souls: it is a transcendent experience.

Trust nature and make peace with something in your life.

Careful, Mr. Spiro, guns are dangerous. Especially the end with the hole.

For now I'm building up stories for the retirement home!

I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert.

I've been the same all along. I talk when I feel like it and I shut up when I don't feel like talking.

There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society

Even though the means of production are more available than ever, I think the true expertise is as rare as ever.