What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.

But at the same time I went down into the mines with working miners who are still young men, younger than I am, who are aware that their working life is coming to an end and they feel suddenly cut off.

I'd always been a great fan of George Orwell.

I've always been struck by how unsuspicious people are in general, if you tell them what you're about.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.

The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.

There is a huge antipathy in England between the north and the south, the working class and the owning class.

The fact is that I loved being in England.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.

I feel very bad about getting things wrong.

I hate to be categorized.

I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books.

Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.

If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south.

I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.

I would like a boyfriend. I'm a very happy person and it is the final, final piece of the puzzle. I'm looking for that shout-it-out-from-the-mountaintops, fall-in-love person.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

It's the story that counts.

It's something I've noticed with my two children - children frequently know and don't know at the same time. They are aware of aspects of the world that are a little bit shadowy, and they choose not to engage with them.

Multiple Bentleys isn't making anyone 'financially set.'

I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth.

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

Only in the eyes of love you can find infinity.

Thoughtful people are concerned with the future because that is the only area of experience about which anything can be done. We cannot change the past, and the present is gone as soon as it is reported, but the future is that in which we can make a difference.

This whole head of the home thing has been blown way out of proportion. Some guys just take it way too far. Some parents take it way too far. Yet children need guidance. They need a parent to help and guide them. They also need a friend. They need a confidant.

What the Obama administration's policies have really been oriented towards have always been towards providing benefits continuing consumption. What this country needs really is a policy which stresses investments.

My family has been in politics a long time in Los Angeles. We very much believe we are elected to represent the people. I mean, I am to give voice to, you know, the over half a million people I represent in my congressional district. I mean, that's the way it works.

A cookie a day keeps the sadness away. An entire jar of cookies a day brings it back.

The older you get, the more comfortable you become with yourself, and you accept what you have physically.

Naked is a human commodity. Nudity is God's art.

I've never not owned a stick shift. There's something about manual transmissions that I really appreciate and enjoy. And besides that, I like driving; I enjoy driving.

Panamanian boxing is unique - it's very musical. It's almost like a dance. It has a lot to do with being in the Caribbean and with salsa. When you see a Panamanian boxer, there's a style. There's a playfulness in the way you throw the punches.

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.

Never confuse people who are always around you with people who are always there for you.

There should be a policy to have a mechanism in place to decide when and how to import or export.

Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.

I'm not trying to climb a ladder - I'm casting a bit of a net.

Born Virginia Marshall but nicknamed Gig, my mother was a home economics teacher who had come all the way across the whole state of Virginia, from her home on the Eastern Shore to our little Appalachian coal town to marry my daddy, Ernest Smith, whose family had lived in these mountains for generations.

Also, schools share some responsibility and should offer helpful orientations that include general information about such recruitment efforts on their campuses.