For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

Is apathy not the nature of God?

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

Technology will mirror the culture and the psychology creating it. We need new psychological scaffolding to work with. Less fear and more optimism.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

Happiness is a sad song.

When power ballads come back, we'll get big hair again.

January has only one thing to be said for it: it is followed by February. Nothing so well becomes its passing.

Even when a film is finished, when I direct a film, sometimes it's a dark profession, but it requires a peculiar form of courage that I admire.

If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there's something called the Geneva Convention we're going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America.

I try to exercise regularly every day, if I can. It renews you and it gives you more balance in your life. This is a key leverage point.