I was very much a child of the Cold War.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut.

Those who fixate on what could have been are bound to miss what already is.

The Lord of my life, who calls me to be brave and walk into the unknown, amazing future. I am always awed by the wonder of you.

Then he commandeered the floor, shooting back and forth like some hot Latin lover. When he finished, everyone applauded. He could have stayed in that moment forever.

Lowered reliability obviously yields a lesser competence. But lowered breadth does so as well.

Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood.

In another life, I could be a personal shopper.

You can't be No. 1 unless you think like No. 1. You have to appear like No. 1.

In the scenes of moral life the soul is at once actor and spectator.

I've always been the only girl in those environments. It's comfortable for me - I prefer it, actually.