I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it.

Fear is danger to your body, but disgust is danger to your soul.

In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.

We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own.

Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.

My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.