I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

But nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

All what we think and know is an illusion. Nothing exists. Everything is an opinion.

Do you know what it’s like, to hide in the shadows until your soul starts to blend into the darkness?

I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.

We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

When I'm flying, I really like to listen to piano music. Something impressionistic, loud and beautiful. Flying can be such a claustrophobic experience, it's nice to open that up a bit with music.

Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.

Noah had 120 years to warn humanity of the flood. We have only 4-5 years until global warming is irreversible