“Don't just stand there and nod. The mind observes and cogitates, the heart engages, and I would encourage you to engage with the process.”

“You could say, in a way, that I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps I might be called a recorder? ... I just happen to be one of those holding the pen, that's all.”

“You know, we worry about the Bomb, a thought interceded, and yet just look around: there are millions of people out there, just like you and me, with their thumb on the self-destruct button.”

“Inspiration can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be quite fickle ... If you want to be able to call on inspiration reliably then you need to work on it with regularity. Someone once said that if you only go out with a bucket to collect water when it's raining, sometimes you'll get water. But if you go out with your bucket every day, even when it's not raining, sometimes you'll catch unexpected rain. And also, a strange thing may happen: that the very act of going out with your bucket may actually provoke such rain.”

“For the most part, what we think of as 'I' is nothing more than a whole heap of conditioning.”

“The shadow of scepticism is dispelled in the light of real knowledge.”

“He had been diagnosed as suffering from atypical schizophrenia. Lord, how he hated that awful-sounding label. It conjured up visions of some deranged maniac escaped from a secure mental hospital.”