“The very best people are like that. They don’t entangle you like flypaper.”

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.

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.

To be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren’s hands.

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

The best thing is to accept the circumstances, not take them personally, deal with them, stop complaining, and give everything your best.

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.

In my opinion, the best fans on the planet really did put us where we are.

These ‘messengers’ will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to go, either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by the darkness of night.

But what’s real? You can’t find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission.

Love betters what is best.

Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.