It is the duty and high privilege of every human being to endeavor to improve himself. Effort at self-improvement is the definition sometimes given for religion. It may relate to our actions or to our convictions. In our actions we should aim at goodness; in our convictions, at truth.

All you should try to do is behave with honour. If you can. At all times.

I'm hooked on Glenn Close in 'Damages.'

I don't really get into architecture in the hotel room. But maybe a little Feng Shui here and there.

I'm a huge 'Ghostbusters' fan. I've seen it, like, 10,000 times, so I couldn't be more looking forward to a reboot.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn't exist - mental concepts.

Everything had seemed possibile. One could laugh at daydreams, but so long as you had the capacity to daydream, there was a chance that you might develop some of the qualities which you dreamed. It was like the religious discipline: words however emptily repeated can in time for a habit, a kind of unnoticed sediment at the bottom of the mind - until one day to you own surprise you find yourself acting on the belief you thought you didn't believe in.

We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, the more we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities by the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision.

The way to focus our minds in prayer, therefore, is to picture mentally the one to whom we pray and the matter about which we pray.

I think everything we do, on one level or another, as writers, most of our writing is informed by our world view.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.