Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.