'Big Brother,' I can't believe people watch. It's just people whispering to each other for hours and then some silly challenge like, who can pull the most stones out of a stuffed alligator, with some product tie-in.

In my culture, whispering in the company of others is considered rude.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.

I am angry when I hear things like Cheney whispering into Bush's ear on the way to Obama's inauguration to ask him to pardon 'Scooter' Libby and not to 'leave a soldier on the battlefield'. What kind of metaphor is that for his petty partisan views, when you have men and women giving the ultimate sacrifice? I have nothing but contempt.

The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.

I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.

I think my mother was there all the time. Every time I thought I was almost dying and gave up hope in my life, I felt like she was whispering in my ear and asking me, 'Why are you doing this?'

To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation.

I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.

I love radio - its immediacy and especially its intimacy... it is part of your life, whispering into your ear. You can't see it, but equally importantly it can't see you.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

If your character is just out there acting a fool, viewers are gonna say, 'Why am I watching this?' But if he's whispering, 'I don't really want to die,' there's a level of vulnerability cemented in these bad characters.

It's something that I had been pushing down my whole life. The search for meaning, I guess, the whispering of the soul.

There's too much insecurity on studio sets, with all the people standing around, whispering.

I'm glad that it didn't take as long to get Shepard off the ground as it's taken this series. I'd begun to think the Congo would be ahead of us in the space race before Whispering Smith ever got on the air.

Success? You can't get a big head about it. When people stare at me, they could be whispering to their friend, 'That guy sucks! Have you seen him before? He's horrible.'

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone - to connect with one another. For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew.

To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'