I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it's enough to make me proud to be an American.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

At night the sky was very near, sprawled in star smoke and gamma cataclysms, but she didn't see it the way she used to, as soul extension, dumb guttural wonder, a thing that lived outside language in the oldest part of her.

I am very unmusical. I can't carry a tune. I would never be able to play an instrument.

It frequently happens that I begin a novel with just a visual image of something, a vague sense of people in three dimensional space.

I don't want to do the type of writing where I recite biography, parentage and education. I want to rise up from the words on the page and do something, hurt someone.

There is no lie in war or preparation of war that can't be defended.