I'm not what you'd call a fearless type of person.

But when I was doing the KKK I had constant nightmares of being exposed as a Jew and lynched by the Klan.

I wasn't in any way a kind of soothsayer or not surprised when Sept. 11 happened. I was absolutely shocked.

At first, I did stories on people who were maybe just eccentric. Omar was a natural progression from that.

My paranoia never ends, but I haven't been paranoid about being spied on my shadowy forces for some time now.

We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them.

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

I did feel like they were telling me that something like that was going to happen. Not specifically - not that planes were going to be flown into the World Trade Center or anything like that - but in the general sense.

But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me.

No, people back home don't realize why there is this kind of need for heroes in America at the moment. People in Britain don't really understand what's going on here. They don't understand why Camp X-ray exists.

Well, I had nightmares when I was doing the Klan story all the time. I had a recurring nightmare of basically being exposed as a Jew inside the Klan compound.

You can say anything to David Icke and he will accept it and put it into his ideology.

I'm not what you'd call a fearless type of person.

Yeah, but in the end his followers take what they want from his philosophy. Maybe it doesn't matter what's going on in David Icke's mind. It's how other people take him.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other people it's overnight. Try not to do anything other than write between those times.

I have thought sometimes that the sanest people, the people who are just very balanced, very happy, are probably lower achieving than other people. My kind of irrationality happens to be fear or anxiety.

I think if somebody is so set in their ways about what they feel about something - and you get this a lot in academia, of course, and also different sorts of journalism too - you're going to sweep under the carpet the facts that don't suit your thesis. And I think that happens quite a lot in the courtroom, for instance.

Obviously, I like to write stories that are page-turners. But I always try my very, very hardest to be as factually true as possible.

Of course there are people who would like to eat breakfast without the screams of toddlers all around them, but those people should get over themselves and stop being stuck up and idiotic.

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S.

Success is always less funny than failure.

There's definitely evidence that capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior. When you look at the worst corners of the American health insurance industry or the sub-prime banking market, it really feels like the more psychopathically someone behaves, the more it's rewarded.

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

I have as many pairs of sneakers as I have shoes.

Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.

As a cosigner of the Veterans' Bill of Rights, I'm committed to making sure that veterans' issues remain a top priority in Congress.

If people aren't in sync, things won't work out well.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

You should only have so many accessories. You have to make sure you have the right ones at the right time.

I hadn't even watched '24' before, and the audition was kind of far away. When I got the material, there wasn't a character yet, so it almost seemed like an assistant to Jack Bauer saying, 'Yes, sir. No, sir.'

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Well, I was always really mature for my age. I'm an above-age reader. I'm not trying to come off like, 'I have a high IQ number. My parents gave me the test.' That's the way I was, I guess. I am still a kid. I love doing kid activities. I'm such a kid, but when I'm on set, I do like to be professional.

The Web forces me to be disciplined and not to waste time - but before the Web was invented, there were plenty of opportunities to do that anyway.

Certain foods no longer agree with me. If I eat French fries, I might feel sick to my stomach.

I dropped the 'Bundy' with my country music because I wanted it to be two separate things: There's me as a songwriter and a country singer, and there's me as a Broadway performer.

I am very pleased to be working with director Woo.

I just had this feeling that, if I were to get into a fight, somehow I would have the ability to fight back, just based on playing 'Street Fighter' for so many years of my life. It's almost like I actually learned martial arts.

It's not that I want to necessarily avoid my darker moments, but I don't capitalize them and put a crown on them and tote them around as the answer anymore.

I thought of myself as kind of an anarchist all my whole adult life, from the days when I was 15 or 16.

My first two years in the CFL, all I thought of was getting back to the NFL - it was like 'I'll put my time in up here and go back.' Then I went and signed a nice contract in Calgary and was like, 'Hey, I can make a living up here, this is great football, and I'm having a blast.'

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism.

Some actors, they have to carry this macho, very masculine element to them, but it's difficult for me to understand that.

Giant silk cotton trees grow out of very tiny seeds.

Oh, we don't have a grandiose marketing plan. We sell products that work, that we like.

The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.

I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way.

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.