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Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me.

If you're Irish, it doesn't matter where you go - you'll find family.

There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again.

Of course God exists. But God is no more a man than you are a snowflake.

Now is the time to dissect and look at every angle in the distasteful world of bullying. Now is the time for us to put our best foot forward and take on the responsibility of saving our children from being killed or destroyed by bullying; also, known as the Silent Killer.

If we had a populist president who didn't alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored.

Unless the pilot takes off and flies the plane, you will be where you are. We all need something beyond prayer to reach god. We need a pilot, a mentor, a master or a guru who can help us realize the truth.

It's been quite a roller coaster ride, but I've grown and learned a lot about myself. The greatest thing is being able to interact with fans and touch people's lives... for that I give thanks.

I'm sure the movie industry is going up but I would love to see more Chinese films about contemporary Chinese about the problems of life on the street.

I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

People in the U.K. share my bemusement with the United States that America doesn't share with itself. They have a sense of irony, which America doesn't have, seeing as it's being run by fundamentalists who take things literally.

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't... It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.

Michael Jackson loved epic symbols. In his shows and his videos, he always destroyed or salvaged worlds; he was the hero of parables about street violence, sexual combat, war and natural disaster. It was always apocalypse or apotheosis now.

I grew up like Athena - covered with playing cards instead of armor - and, at the age of seven, materialized on a TV show, doing magic.

Nobody likes Jews. You can't say people like Jews. We're not popular. We're too smart to be liked. But it has been unacceptable to express anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.

When I used to sit in the office with Jay Z and L.A. Reid... we would negotiate back and forth and discuss music. You're sitting in front of someone for hours. It's all about being passionate. Everything begins with yourself.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.

I know you do. You love…so much, and you love me and I…I’m really…thankful…