There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.

People forget years and remember moments.

When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.

In a world of stupidity a thinking man is insane

The school takes its coloring from yourown attitude,

All the leadership positions that I have had have one common denominator: none has required that I give up my science work.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

I think one of the sexiest things a couple can share is laughing.

Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.

President Bush said global warming is happening much quicker than he thought, and then his staff pulled him aside and said 'It's just springtime.'

People, the people we really love, where did they come from? What did we do to deserve them?

Everywhere the flower of obedience is intelligence. Obey a man with cordial loyalty and you will understand him.

It's been interesting, "Frostpine said casually. "I wanted Daja to get some experience of other smiths'-and other mages'- ways of doing things, if only so she can see mine is best.