There has always been a certain proportion of people who leave the Church on issues of authority and sex. That hasn't changed since we started doing research on it back in the early 1960s.

As a youngster, I travelled every year across the sea to Tiree. On occasion, we ventured to Skye on the Kyleakin-Kyle of Lochalsh ferry, where there is now a bridge.

How thin and insecure is that little beach of white sand we call consciousness. I've always known that in my writing it is the dark troubled sea of which I know nothing, save its presence, that carried me. I've always felt that creating was a fearless and a timid, a despairing and hopeful, launching out into that unknown.

Americans deserve to feel secure in their own lives, in their own middle-class aspirations, before you go to them and say, 'We're going to have to enforce navigable sea lanes in the South China Sea.'

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

What I've found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.

You can't be in love with a Google search.

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

Drones, with their agility and small size, seem perfect for search and rescue operations.

Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over.

I'm rooting for Saudi Arabia getting a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

When you do live abroad, you're basically searching for some kind of peace.

Our kind of research might be one of the first projects to go. Our work is not urgent; it's not the cure for cancer or Alzheimer's. But we have a way of understanding human life that you can't get anywhere else, and it lays the foundation for important, actionable things.

'Spooks' was unique. It took up such a lot of your life - I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That's six months of your life.

Mangroves, salt marshes and sea grass lock away carbon at up to five times the rate of tropical forests.

Our field is very focused on finding Earth 2.0, and anything we can do to narrow the search is helpful.

Most people, once the money started getting bigger, thought we would buy a millionaire's house looking out at the sea - but what would two middle-aged people do that for? We were sensible enough when we got it.