An old-growth forest, a mountain range or a river valley is more important and certainly more loveable than any country will ever be.

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.

People say to me, Oh, it's so wonderful that you're writing about real things, and that it's a political thing to do, and I say, look-to be in my position and not say anything is a hell of a political thing. You need to think politically, otherwise you'll be one of these people who says, Oh, this person's saying this and that person's saying that, and I'm confused. And I say, yeah, because you want to be confused.

The Occupy movement found places where people who were feeling that anger could come and share it - and that is, as we all know, extremely important in any political movement. The Occupy sites became a way you could gauge the levels of anger and discontent.

The genocide will not necessarily take the form of war, or death camps. Most likely it will take the form of ecocide, in which landscapes are devastated and the populations that live there slowly starve or turn upon each other savagely because there isn't enough food or water to go around.

I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.