In India, I personally believe yes, there is a clear fear of unknown; there's a lot of risk aversions in science and technology. They want predictability in everything they do, and it starts from people. It starts from investors. It starts from the regulators. You see that mindset across the society.

My mother is a strong woman. Her strength comes from being tested by life's unpredictability. It comes from soldiering on for her children, even when she might rather have given up. I know it hasn't always come easily, but I also know it's her greatest gift.

Years ago, during a John Grisham phase, I tried to pinpoint exactly why I found Grisham's often predictable legal thrillers quite so comforting. The best answer I could come up with was the frequency with which Grisham tells us that his lead characters are sipping coffee. When it comes to food and drink, predictability can console.

I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

The thought of an impending 'storm' that is accompanied with change is enough to send many fleeing to their confined box of predictability and familiarity.

I like to work in watercolor, with as little under-drawing as I can get away with. I like the unpredictability of a medium which is affected as much by humidity, gravity, the way that heavier particles in the wash settle into the undulations of the paper surface, as by whatever I wish to do with it. In other mediums you have more control, you are responsible for every mark on the page - but with watercolor you are in a dialogue with the paint, it responds to you and you respond to it in turn. Printmaking is also like this, it has an unpredictable element. This encourages an intuitive response, a spontaneity which allows magic to happen on the page. When I begin an illustration, I usually work up from small sketches - which indicate in a simple way something of the atmosphere or dynamics of an illustration; then I do drawings on a larger scale supported by studies from models - usually friends - if figures play a large part in the picture. When I've reached a stage where the drawing looks good enough I'll transfer it to watercolor paper, but I like to leave as much unresolved as possible before starting to put on washes. This allows for an interaction with the medium itself, a dialogue between me and the paint. Otherwise it is too much like painting by number, or a one-sided conversation.

Life is like the oil within a lamp. It can be measured, but the pace at which it burns depends on how the dial is turned day by day, how bright and fierce the flame. And there is no predicting whether the lamp might be knocked to the ground and shatter, when it could have blazed on a great while longer. Such is the unpredictability of life.

Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff.

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options as we have in the past.

I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

Giving someone a one-time stimulus check or a one-time tax cut that expires doesn't allow the predictability that business needs.

The best subjects are always people who never fail to amaze me by their unpredictability.

I discovered that the horse is life itself a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability of life's generosity and beauty a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.