“I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material – something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.”

Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel.

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother’s house was filled with English books.

Whenever I’m out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think.

During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people’s creations.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven.

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.

If poisons were ponies, I’d put my money on cyanide.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.

I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Except I’m aware that as a writer you can’t get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

The citation for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry reads, ‘for contribution to the knowledge of electronic structures and geometry of molecules, especially free radicals,’ and therefore implies that the Prize has been awarded for a long series of studies extending practically over my whole scientific life.

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.

Youth has many glories, but judgement is not one of them, and no amount of electronic amplification can turn a belch into an aria.

Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cockney singing group with a Southern Negro style and Indian and electronic music.

It’s the bane of both the news and sports businesses, both electronic and print.

they’ve got television and the electronic games that they can bury themselves in like ostriches. They don’t have to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around them.

Where are the young people today? Why are they allowing some of the things that are happening in their country? I am really upset about that. I feel that they are burying their heads in the sand of electronic games and television.

It is captivating, isn’t it? England has such a great scene of electronic music, and I think that was very prominent in Pusher, and the nightlife was the beat of the film.