mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God.

The retriever took each bit of meat from his master's hand with a delicacy almost equal to that of a hummingbird sipping sugar water from a garden feeder, and when it was all gone, he gazed up at Dusty with an adoration that could not have been much less than the love with which the angels regard God.

Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.

Not an insult sweetie. That was a thirteen word kiss.

Besides, I can't get to where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I've got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can - that's how I buy the ticket to where I want to be.

I have more self-doubt than any writer I've ever known.... The positive aspect of self-doubt - if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it - is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image.

I've not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent.