There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways.

There are many other writers whose work I admire tremendously, but none whose work struck me at just the right young age. Jack Vance taught me that speculative fiction, science fiction, could be wonderfully and liberatingly stylistic. It didn't have to be pulp stuff. He really changed my writing and my view of science fiction, so if nothing else, my little homage to him in the novelette I wrote for that anthology is my thank-you to him. He helped me see that any genre can have excellent writing in it.

Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair.... I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life.

Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.