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

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.

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.

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

How can I set free anyone who doesn’t have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom?

On these days I go to my studio, leaf through an art history book, and tell myself that I am part of this great tradition.

They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It’s their security How can they expect me or anyone else to set them free if they don’t really want to be free?

Coy Nature, (which remain’d, though aged grown, A beauteous virgin still, enjoy’d by none, Nor seen unveil’d by anyone),

If you are in a bad relationship with anyone else, it is because you are in a bad relationship with yourself.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married.

Without anyone laughing at the giant’s wings and the dwarf’s legs that impede my gait.

Don’t be sorry. Just try not to let him touch you. When he touches you I see red. I can’t take it. I don’t want to see him or anyone else touch you