I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

The kind of event on a conveyor belt that causes a fire occurs in a variety of industrial environments, not uniquely in coal environments.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing. Then it's a constant spreading out of that five minutes.

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.

When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.

Racism always exists cheek by jowl with, inside, and alongside culture and class. As a rule, it is inseparable from them. That is why, for example, food, language and names assume such importance in racial prejudice.

I love 'I'm British But...' It's such a sweet, innocent, open-hearted film, and it has the sort of openness that I still aspire to with everything I do. It wears its heart, head, everything on its sleeve.

My degree was in education, but the idea of being a teacher lost out to being a reporter. I worked at a newspaper for a while, then went to New York and worked in PR at RCA and NBC, and at 'The United States Steel Hour,' a drama series.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

I get extremely nervous before performances. I pray and try to look at it as, 'I'll go out there and have fun,' but it's very nerve-wracking for me. I don't think that will ever change.

Its never too early for a cocktail.

I grew up in a very small town which is remote even by Indian standards. I always dreamed of the world.

We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.

I don't consider myself a starlet or a Hollywood person.

When I see a car I've designed going down the street and somebody admiring it, that's a nice feeling.

It would be extraordinary if the BBC were to make me the first black 'Doctor Who;' it would be extraordinary.

When you gradually add in nutrient-dense, fiber-rich foods, you simply stop feeling cravings. You run out of space in your belly for the old junk. Instead of craving, you feel full, fulfilled, and content.

I've always found it hard to say sorry.

The scale and the pace of environmental change at the beginning of the 21st Century are a serious wake up call to us as human beings on this planet.

Placebos work.

A mans wife has more power over him than the state has.

I adore this adventure, I adore working with youth. For me it's a daily challenge, working to help these youths realize their dreams.

The smarter you get, the less you speak.

You want people to be eager for your book; the downside is when the people forget the series even exists.

Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts.

I could smell myself awake with that coffee.

I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I just want to be reasonably successful and live a normal life with all the conveniences to make it so.

I go to the Natural History Museum and look at the cage of stuffed starlings there. But my favourite thing is the big blue whale. The scale of it is unbelievable, and makes you feel how insignificant you are as a human being.