"He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way she was looking at him - she could read what was in his eyes, he realised. It must have been written plainly there, like words on the page of a book. There had been no time, no chance, to hide it.

"At first we had so much to catch up on we were talking a hundred words a second, barely even listening to the ends of one another's sentences before moving onto the next. And there was laughing. Lots of laughing. Then the laughing stopped and there was this silence. What the hell was it?

I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.

The minute I stopped trying to find the right girl, and started trying to become the right guy...the girl came.

The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life.

At one time I smoked but in 1959 I couldn't think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped - and I haven't had a cigarette since.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.

Reclaiming the word 'fat' was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth because the truth is that I am fat and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat I agree whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.

Well I took a sabbatical. I walked away from shooting movies because I couldn't handle the travel. I'm a single parent. I had young kids and I found that keeping in touch with them from hotel rooms and airports wasn't working for me. So I stopped.

In this world shipmates sin that pays its way can travel freely and without passport whereas Virtue if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers.

I stopped and gazed on the little dull man who was being paid to be a teacher of teachers. I turned and walked to the door slammed it closed with a bang and broken glass crashed to the floor. There was uproar behind me in the class which did not interest me at all.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal because if you lose it then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel I try and fill up notepads.

I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and financial acceptance.

I stopped thinking too much about what could happen and relied on my physical and mental strength to play the right shots at the right time.

I was on the football team because I wanted to experience the different iconic social classes of high school. So football for me was an attempt to socially integrate in an interesting way. And then I didn't like it anymore and stopped doing it and focused more on drama and science and other forms of art and music.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

At the time of Polaroid - and I did a couple of other commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff - at that point I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all that sort of thing.

I told my father to stop smoking around the age of two or three years old and he stopped smoking. So the relationship between the kid and the parent is very powerful and if you give the kid the right information it can be very useful to the family.

When I got my first television set I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky briefly in the '90s and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.