But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.