Francis Bacon is one of my giant inspirations. I just love him to pieces.
Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces
If I could have anyone's mind for a day, I really can't think of anyone other than Einstein.
I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.
When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.
The man who thinks with Horace thinks divine.
I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.
I know I might sound a little bit picky, but someone like a muse who can inspire me is my ideal type.
The inspiration of a single book has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralization of a single book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals.
But nothing ever put 'Hoppy' in the shade. No one could fail to recognize in the little figure... the authentic gold of intellectual inspiration, the Fundator et Primus Abbas of biochemistry in England.
I don't pick roles based on how famous they are going to make me; I pick roles based on how they're going to inspire me intellectually.
