Is anything accidental?

The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.

I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.

I write in American slang.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

I'm not gifted, but I'm not hopeless.

There are certain things that ordinary people have that celebrities don't have.

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.

It's trite to say that the world has gotten smaller in the age of globalization, but my travels have told me that it's wrong to think this means there is some kind of uniform world culture.

In America, if you don't do a 100 million dollars, you've done nothing.

Is anything accidental?

If I had parallel lives to pursue, I would also want one as a painter.

You can really do more than you think you can do.

I was a precocious reader.

When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money.

As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.

I never learned to read music.

I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

I believe that interest in heroes is universal and eternal.

Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype.

If it's not American, the French won't go see it.

Chaos is the enemy of Order but the enemy of Chaos is also the enemy of Order.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.

It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

We are all in this together. We want to have, I suppose, a single point of entry so that anyone coming near a disability service can get a very complete picture. Government needs to understand that picture, and we need to be able to offer somebody a one-stop shop.

Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.

The luxury we have when we do a series is that we go through a long journey, and it keeps a lot of information and things to be revealed.

Fear is an abortion of good thoughts.

The activity of being a husband a father those are roles too but underneath them is the spiritual center that connects us all and thats whats most important.

I know very few people who have literally improvised a film from start to finish.

There's never been a game plan, and I suppose I've had an uneasy relationship with my ambition. Someone who had been in my year at drama school once said to me that I was terrifyingly ambitious back then. Which was not at all what I felt at the time - I felt paralysed with shyness, though that evaporated.

You see your children growing. You look at your grandchildren, and you say to yourself, 'What if I weren't here? Have I done all I can to prepare them for their role in life?' You realize that you never quite do everything, but you want to do better than what you have done.

After a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light in the words of the popular song the 'Age of Aquarius,' the time of the mind's true liberation.

We are going to have to be there until we defeat this enemy.

Let me tell you something - being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.

I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me.

Do you know what the overhead is of the Medicare system? One-point-zero-five percent. Do you know what - private insurance is 30 percent in overhead and profits? Given a choice how I'm going to improve health care, I'm going to take it away from private insurance profits and overhead. Wouldn't you?

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Any excuse to get away from the computer screen is welcome.

I am not particularly well-behaved.

Show me a man with very little money and I will show you a bum.

A 20-pound weight on the back of a small horse is more damaging than a 20-pound weight on a very big horse.

The Lord prefers common looking people. That is why he made so many of them.

Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity.