Silence creates it's own violence.

I do believe very much in the idea of unexpected or "convulsive" beauty - beauty in the service of liberty.

My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books. I've learned that the more I collaborate, like by having someone do a soundtrack to one of my books, the more I see my own work differently.

When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.

We should feel an urgency about our environment and what's been done to it by human action and inaction. I wouldn't say there's a resurgence - I think it's been with us all along, and especially since the 1960s and 1970s, but it is true that there's almost a subsection of the bookstore devoted to it now. Personally, I've been addressing these issues in my long and short fiction since the late 1980s - basically since the beginning of my career.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.

I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.