As William Gibson says, the future is already here but it's lumpy. It's unevenly distributed. Some people are already living this, the ones on low-lying islands off the coast of India are being swept away, you know, it's already happening to some people. We happen to be very lucky so far.

I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.

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.

The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don't know the plot. They don't know their own individual plot... they don't know what's going to happen to them.

When a man is attacked in print, it's usually for saying what he says; when a woman is attacked in print, it's often for being who she is.

I've been involved in activities with other people who were put in jail. We were protesting the closing of the prison farm program at the prison I used in a previous book, Alias Grace. Some of us also put up money in order to save the heirloom herd of cows there. So I own half a cow!