The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.

In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not drifting but rising, rising toward something right and of significance.

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.

While I like people, I do also like being alone in a room and seeing what you can do with a particular theme or subject.

I'm either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they're afraid of mutants [...] Fear implies respect.

Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.

The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it's no such thing. It's boring and it's depressing and it's stupid. Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over. They're shallow, empty, boring people who couldn't give you five minutes of interesting conversation if you had the piss-poor luck to be at a party full of them. Maybe some can be monkey-clever, some of the time, but they aren't hardly ever smart.