I like fast plots with things that explode.

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.

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself. (254)

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

Acting is great. It's so much fun. It's a job where you literally get to do something that's a great experience, and then you try a new experience, and you take things from all of it.

I have never felt any pain that I can remember.

I love football and it's the sport I would really like to play. I've said on national television here that I would really love to play for one of our football clubs when I finished my tennis career.

...human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.

On the whole, it seems to me that probably the American press is doing a better job of this mediation, so to speak, between the people and the administration than the press of any other country.