One day I'm going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do....is to watch these birds.

Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.

One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones. In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads. When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are...they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded. We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.

In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.