There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life. These are wine, women and song.

I think most things are pretty magical, and that it's less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.

I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.

Freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent.

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.

He had read books, newspapers and magazines. He knew that if you ran away you sometimes met bad people who did bad things to you; but he had also read fairy tales, so he knew that there were kind people out there, side by side with the monsters.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.