We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.

The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die.

She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

I was very much a child of the Cold War.