I saw all of the films [based on The Tempest] available, including the one with Helen Mirren in which Prospero is Prospera - you wonder, "Would it work?" But it does, because anything she does works.

I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.

Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

Why aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?

The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.