Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

Choice of evils debates always produce extremism - people choose what they hope is the lesser evil, then call it good and demonize the other choice. It will be a challenge for your generation to synthesize - to move beyond Us versus Them, to We.

Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil, and its derivatives, because it's not going to be around forever.