Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth” – I rap my knuckles on the table – “you’ll hear oaken solidity, not sawdust and glue.

Nothing attunes you to the beauty of the quotidian like a man who decides not to kill you after all

A book can’t be a half-fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant

The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.

Power and moneyLike Pooh Bear and honeyStick fast.

Not a clue – and, no, I don’t touch drugs. The world’s unstable enough without scrambling your brain for kicks.

Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither.

Books’ll be back, ” Esther-in-Unalaq predicts. “Wait till the power grids start failing in the 2030s and the datavats get erased. It’s not far away. The future looks a lot like the past.

The Future, ” says Ian, in a film-trailer voice. “Coming soon, to a Present near you.

Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.

Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.

I don’t think it makes much difference what we’re recovering from, all suffering eventually points to the need for healing.

She'd been pounding her location and thoughts into a device that would send those things to virtually any human with Internet access and yet looking over her shoulder had been a violation of privacy.

He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was.

Terrorism is just a whole other level of anger management issues.

The sterilization of men is one method of birth control. The surest, most radical method. To you it seems dreadful. To me it seems that, properly applied, it's by no means dreadful.

It's hard to say what role race really played in my case.

You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.

People who smoke cigarettes, they say "You don't know how hard it is to quit smoking." Yes I do. It's as hard as it is to start flossing.

Yes, I'm religious. God has shown me things, made certain ways clear to me.

He [Cassius Clay] became a Black Muslim, which is a pseudo-religion for unbright neurotics who feel the need to hate all white people.