If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind.

I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off.

I also wanted Parker to operate in the Internet age without losing being Parker. He's always operated in the world without really being with the world, and cyberspace means that the rest of us are more and more living the same way.

Everybody in New York is looking for something. Once in a while, somebody finds it.

Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.

My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try to work seven days a week, so as not to lose touch with that world. Within that, I'm flexible on hours and output.

If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss.

Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder.

A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview.

The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

We finally found out the technique of separating and getting information about where every train would be at any moment. Of course, I went over budget many times, because - as you go along - some things improved, and you get better ideas.

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

When I don't have any ideas, I pick up fabric and start working with it and something happens.

There are some who are scared by unity and by building a country on the basis of ideas.

I have this problem in the rebirthing community because it's so powerful sometimes, I get thrown out because people want to do things a certain way and they are just not open to new ideas, so they don't want me to come around.