“So far it’s 43 books in 25 years.”

The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.

You’ll call me damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold… doesn’t bear thinking about, but I suppose we’d have made it work somehow.

We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.

You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

What I mean by that is that the point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness.

Wyrd bith ful araed (Fate is inexorable).

Research is a lifelong occupation so it’s hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.

I’ll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.

Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.

Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life… Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted.

Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don’t take chances then you’ll never have a winning hand, and I’ve no regrets.

Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you’re writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.

We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh… or else you’ll weep yourself to death.

The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it’s predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer.

She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.

I am a serial monogamist of sorts, and have been with my girlfriend for almost four years.

Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn’t allowed in a photo because I wasn’t wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.

There have been man-on-the-street interviews for years, but insulting people is not that funny to me.

Well, I wanted to play twenty years in the major leagues. I never made it twenty though. I played nineteen.

Tim Duncan’s foot issue, I think, is a major factor in this year’s playoffs. That’s not the kind of injury that gets better over time playing NBA basketball.

Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees.