After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

Because there is that sort of feeling that people don't know what to do with gaps in their lives. It's a scary notion, but actually, if you can stand in space just for a little while, a new door will open, or you'll be able to see in the dark after a while. You'll adjust.

I love the game of basketball. I guess it started with 'Space Jam.' Right after that movie, I went out there to my little Flight hoop and tried to do every dunk in the movie.

I actually don't invest in anything that is social, mobile, deals or ad networks simply because those are areas where there are so many players and so many other smart people in the space, I feel like I don't have a competitive advantage. So I tend to go after things that are e-commerce, like healthcare.

Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

I am a marked person, and no one who's unmarked is going to understand that. It's very intimidating. I don't even know what my place is anymore. What's my role in society? Who am I, after everybody has branded me?

In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it's worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.

Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in Style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.

After you have won a game, you can maybe smile for a minute and then you have to think: 'How can I recover as quickly as possible.'

In the past, I tried to put on a brave face and smile after a defeat, but then it would backfire in training, and I'd get frustrated. Now I just embrace it, let it out, and then, two days later, I'm back in training and ready for the next game.

Give yourself ten years of failing with a smile on your face. If, after ten years, you still have the passion, you're heading to success!

I'm just trying to write things that resonate with people. And when we're all going through something together, I think you smile after that - I hope that people leave inspired after one of my shows.

After God and my family, it's surf. I don't imagine me not surfing. Surf brings me smile every day.

After six years without seeing one, I love just seeing a smile - every smile I see gives me hope.