The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.

Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.

Life is long and dumb and devastating. People should believe whatever they need to believe to get by.

I did it, and it's all right. Even the worst experiences were right in their time, because otherwise, it wouldn't have come to this point. That was your road, and you had to walk it.

I think that you do get a little extra jolt of confidence when you win an Emmy.

Be committed to whatever you're doing. That's something I've taken to heart and tried to do with whatever activities I take up.

Self-esteem starts out as a personal blessing, but it becomes nothing less than an evolutionary force.

I alternate between feeling incredibly lucky that I've gotten away with almost everything I wanted to do, and feeling like I've been shafted.

Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it

I don't do yoga. I bite the hella outta my nails. I smoke, I eat all the wrong food, I don't exercise.

I gotta think that one that becomes a philosophy of work, which is "no excuses."