Of course, I don't know everything. Considering the infinite amount of knowledge that one could acquire in a virtually innumerable array of intellectual disciplines, it's probably more accurate to say that I don't know anything.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

There are thousands of proteins in the cells, some of them very large chains of molecules. And the cell doesn't function if one of those chains of molecules isn't there, and you start looking at the complexity of life and the mystery of life, and then start thinking about things like the twenty universal constants, that if any one of them from Plank's minimum to the mass of a proton, if one of them is the tiniest bit off, there would be no life or possibility of it in the universe.

...like a scene from the swamps of Louisiana or the mind of Poe on opium.

I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.

Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

I've had good publishers and bad publishers, and you've got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it's not.