I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

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.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

What you're going through is not meant to hurt you, but meant to deliver you from the evil oppressing you.

When you live in contrary to the demand of life, life doesn't work for you. Life rather works against you.

To him who is in fear everything rustles.

Hiding here, are you? That’s awkward.” “Why?” “Because I had intended to hide here myself.” “You may hide here with me, if you wish.

True repentance always involves reform.

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last.

It is a feeble compassion that pulls up short where self-interest begins.

If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you - the dream or him.

I do have some books, but in all the distance flights I've made I've never opened the books. I've been too busy.