Kindliness and sympathy, fellowship and understanding, are always good, but best when they come from a distant corner of the world.

The pursuit of natural knowledge, the investigation of the world - mental and material - in which we live, is not a dull and spiritless affair: rather is it a voyage of adventure of the human mind, a holiday for reckless and imaginative souls.

One of the fundamental characteristics of striated muscle, and the one involving the greatest difficulty in investigation, is the great rapidity with which changes take place in it.

In a large mass of muscle deprived of its circulation, the rate at which the recovery process can go on, after severe stimulation, depends on the rate at which oxygen can reach the fibres by diffusion.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

I think back on that day when 16-year-old me scribbled on some silly piece of paper for some long-forgotten high school career-day project that my dream job was 'romance novelist.'

I feel offended when people bring up my four marriages. I was 19 when I first got married and I thought it would be for ever. But each of my marriages has added to my life and helped form me as a human being.

I don't know about marriage as much as I do know that I'd be a great father.