Blood is not destiny.

An untrampled scorpion troubles no one.

Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind.

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.

Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side.

Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade.

I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.

The surfeit of bad trends pushes me to set my stories in worlds which are often diminished versions of our own present.

The future looks a bit bleak to me.

But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

It was amazing to me that, all of a sudden, I was hearing my music on the radio and coming out of cars.

The chicken came first - God would look silly sitting on an egg.

You look up to your parents and you want them to accept you, and you don't want them to look at you in a negative light. So you do things to make them proud and accept you.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

If you're going climbing with young people, you get very, very used to seeing your climbing partner as a tiny little dot.

Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.

I've never said I'm immortal. I do believe in correct language. I'm eternal; I'm not immortal.

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.

Because I'm 5'4' and athletically built, if I gain five pounds it looks like a lot.

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.