I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

A sound-bite culture can't discuss science very well. Exactly what we're losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can't be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.