I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

Winning is an inside job. A person who achieves victory is the one that first wins his or her internal battles.

Words often outlive the people who create them.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

The difference between the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity - mumbling to the ceiling, Judaism - mumbling to the wall, Islam - mumbling to the floor.

There is nothing as important as having the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

Rather be frumpy than vulgar! Much. Frumps are often celebrities in disguise -- but a person of vulgar appearance is vulgar all through.

Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love.

Meditation and prayer are my secret weapons, and when I use them, I can move mountains.