Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

I never played inside as a kid – even in the rain I’d go out.

Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It’s an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.

The traditional Christian attitude toward human personality was that human nature was essentially good and that it was formed and modified by social pressures and training.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything...

It’s not about retro or modern, it’s about this note or that note, which sounds better?

It’s been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!

Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly.

My first thought was always a cigarette. It still is, but I haven’t cheated.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all.

However difficult it may be to bring it about, some form of world government, with agreed international law and means of enforcing the law, is inevitable.

Oh, that sound? I’m in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Sleeping together is a euphemism for people, but tantamount to marriage with cats.

I do not write for an audience.

We reinvent ourselves to solve a client’s problem. It’s more than just tweaking. It’s rethinking what your audience wants and needs. Isn’t that what great actors constantly do?

If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they’re watching isn’t the original.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.

I don’t write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn’t be any adventure. It wouldn’t have any vitality.

While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they’re not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects...

I’m only going to be running the Pro Class this season, that way I can focus on the Pro Championship.

The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the dungeon walls withdraw, the weight is lifted your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart, the day was not bad, the season has not been...

Am I worried people will say I’m repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but eventually I just decided to do what I wanted to do.

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

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and...

The bizarre world of cards is a world of pure power politics where rewards and punishments are meted out immediately.

Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.

I have read only the first ‘Harry Potter’ book. I thought it excellent, perhaps the best thing written for older children since The Hobbit. I wish the books had been around when my kids were...

What women have to stand on squarely is not their ability to see the world in the way men see it, but the importance and validity of their seeing it in some other way.

Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

Tennis and golf are best played, not watched.

But you’re right, I did think about acting more and then decided against it.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

The easiest thing to do, whenever you fail, is to put yourself down by blaming your lack of ability for your misfortunes.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and...

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

My stuff was more of a folk coffeehouse thing, with more acoustic guitar, just me doing a single, and then adding on instruments and voices, with emphasis on lyrics and singing and light kind of...

Like, in high school, I was a good student and got straight As. It was very strict and you couldn’t do well there unless you studied very hard, but every time there was any trouble,...

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

A lot of the cosmologists and astrophysicists clearly had been reading science fiction.

No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.

The United Nations has long sought the ability to raise revenues in this manner as a means of reducing its reliance on American and other member nations’ dues to sustain the UN’s operations.

Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there’s no such thing as a comedian who doesn’t do impressions.

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.

Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures, and their cognizance of the affairs of their own kind.

Incorruptibility by money is the old story… Now it’s incorruptibility by media.