It was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

Pride is the parent of destruction; pride eats the mind and the heart and the soul alive.

Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all.

I love the world the Lord has created; I love the mountains, the rivers, the valleys, the skies. I love the forests, the fields, the flowers. I love the mysteries of evolution and dna and the big bang. I want to know the majesties of the Lord's Creation. I cannot close my eyes to all this. I cannot turn away from science and scientific exploration.