I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it.

I cannot think of a country in which I would be happy with the government and dominant ideology and available propaganda.

Outsider means "I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain."

I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you're not, to think of it as sovereign because you're not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES.