You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.

But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.

I would not change [my past work] anymore than I would airbrush a photo of myself.

Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far in the future and things way back in the past.

You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.