To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

A few hours after the news broke about the death of crime writer Donald E. Westlake, a newspaper asked me to write a tribute. In short order I did so, calling attention to his decades-long career, both under his own name and that of his primary alter ego, Richard Stark, who introduced the unsentimental antihero-heister Parker to the literary canon.

I've always told Bindi, 'If anything ever happened to me, I will always watch over you from Heaven.' But she always understood because, living at a zoo, animals die; she's seen death. She knows what death is.

I think about death. I don't want to die with clothes in the cleaners.

When you're watching a Bond movie, if there's a violent death, there's something about cleverly chosen twists, or what props are used, or some way that he's doing something that feels like an ironic twist, that feels like it gives the audience permission to enjoy watching it and to enjoy watching something that's otherwise just brutality.