I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.

It is no use to grumble and complain It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice When God sorts out the weather and sends rain - Why rain's my choice.

Funny enough if you are looking at people these days who are putting Botox in their face and getting all sorts of plastic surgery we look at them and go I can tell you've had Botox. I can tell you've had plastic surgery. You look really strange to me. But no one's saying anything. We're just accepting the fact that they're strange-looking.

As I get older all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.

Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.

I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things whether it's various types of music or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

I'd like to work with Justin Bieber. He's talented and he's so young. I know what he's going through. I've lived what he's living through right now. Working with him would complete a circle of sorts for me. And he might find it a worthwhile experience himself.

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.

Dad I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

I used to say 'Man I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm funny I'll go on trips with them - I'll do all sorts of stuff.' But the momming? I'm not made for that. I have a really good mom I know what she put into it.

I never think of myself as any kind of sex symbol but I get letters from all over all sorts. It's really cool. I get a lot from inmates which is kind of scary. But the best was the guy who wanted to send me a plane ticket to fly me to his prom.

When I grew up we had gym at school two or three dance classes after school ice skating lessons and all sorts of sports at our finger tips. We weren't glued to computers because they didn't exist so being active was all we knew.

You don't have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger - where they can't afford to be second to strike - the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high.

I like the desert for short periods of time from inside a car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.

I have a need to make these sorts of connections literal sometimes and a vehicle often helps to do that. I have a relationship to car culture. It isn't really about loving cars. It's sort of about needing them.

Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one things that simply won't be got rid of.

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.

There are two sorts of curiosity - the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.

I never felt totally 100% patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon and Damascus and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.