"Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins."

"Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen."

"Philologists assure us that żulm in Arabic originally meant 'to put something out of its proper place,' so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, I.E., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur’ān, with its clear idea that all injustice is basically reflexive."

"If we learn the most by our mistakes the wise have the most failures. While the timid and unfailing will always be missing true knowledge and perspective."

"To notice is to select, toregard some bits of perception, or some features of the world, as morenoteworthy, more significant, than others. To these we attend, and therest we ignore—for which reason conscious attention is at the same time ignorance despite the fact that it gives us a vividlyclear picture of whatever we choose to notice."

"The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."