We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

I hate to break this to you: One of these days I'm going to die. I expect that when I croak I'll no longer be using Twitter, unless I can do it from the grave.

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

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.

I am not running for mayor yet. But if it comes to be true that people cannot voice an opinion unless they have been elected, then we are no longer in a democracy.