“I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to – mostly the latter.”

I do hope you have some money. I’m getting tired of hitting people.

Emerson,’ I said, choosing my words with care, ‘it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won’t have to carry you such a distance.

I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian).

I knew the answer, and–of course–so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me.

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

Spring is always cruel, with its false promise of resurrection.

People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.

I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don’t like to read.

If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson

If someone lies down and invites you to trample upon him, you are a remarkable individual if you decline the invitation.

It’s not unsporting to thrash a cowardly cad,’ said Simmons. ‘Everyone knows you don’t fight like a gentleman.’ ‘That might be called an oxymoron,’ Ramses said. ‘Oh–sorry. Bad form to use long words. Look it up when you get home.’ The poor devil didn’t know how to fight, like a gentleman or otherwise.

Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

Reputations are shaped not by facts but by prejudices.

And that material things are to make the world a better place” and the latter came from my father because his father died of tuberculosis when he was twelve. They had no insurance, six kids and a hell of a time surviving.

There must always be some who are brighter and some who are stupider, the latter make up for it by being better workers.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.

If one gains an interest in the history of the earth, he is quite sure to gain an interest in the history of the life on the earth. If the former illustrates the theory of development, so must the latter.

These latter institutions [the civil service, trade unions, media of all kinds], notably of course television.

Sometimes things are the way they are and can’t be changed, other times it’s because no one ever tried. Your job is to find the latter.