At this point I don't get hired a lot because people don't think I could finance a movie.

As a novelist I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare no matter what happens to the world that's not equity it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

Today if you look at financial systems around the globe more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.

Many people are in the dark when it comes to money and I'm going to turn on the lights.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

I think that the problem is that people fear so many things and they don't live life to its fullest. And for me as an artist if God should want me to come this Wednesday to the end of my life so be it.

One of the most gratifying things I get as an artist is when people watch me do these different demonstrations and they in some way feel empowered by what I'm doing so they can confront their own fears. Maybe it's the fear of getting in an elevator maybe it's the fear of going on a plane and seeing the world.

People feel uncomfortable talking about racial issues out of fear that if they express things they will be characterized in a way that's not fair. I think that there is still a need for a dialogue about things racial that we've not engaged in.

People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent.

How are fears born? They are born because of differences in tradition and history they are born because of differences in emotional political and national circumstances. Because of such differences people fear they cannot live together.

I know a lot of people fear the rougher types who might be at a state school but surely it is better to know who they are and how to deal with them than for that kind of child to appear as a completely different species to yours.

Loneliness is I think people's biggest fear whether they are conscious of it or not.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends and then someone can finish it for me.

Most people come to fear not death itself but the many terrible ways of dying.

If the markets had behaved badly that would obviously add to people's sense of alarm... but there has been a lot of reassurance coming particularly in the way the Brits handled all this. There seems to be no great fear that something like that is going to happen here.

People don't want to talk about death just like they don't want to talk about computer security. Maybe I should have named my workstation Fear. People are so motivated by fear.

People are so used to having their lives filmed they're not even conscious of having cameras around. I still have that sort of suspicion when a camera comes out. I view it as a thing to fear.

I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated to live in fear of being found out.

I like normal stuff people fear - like spiders and heights. I'm frightened by the unknown by things that are hard to figure out and get a grip on.

There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it.

I play with a fear of letting people down. That's what motivates me.

Studios because they are investing a great deal of money in movies they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based so they pigeonhole people. But I've written everything from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy I've done it all.