Americans don't usually have to think about Canadian-American relations, or, as they would put it, American-Canadian relations. Why think about something which you believe affects you so little? We, on the other hand, have to think about you whether we like it or not.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.

Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

I grew up amongst biologists.