Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read everything. I am easily amused.

As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it's about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up

I'm with the spirit of Earth-Day-yet-to-come. Nobody can really predict the future, all you can do is look at trends, and that could change at any moment.

Just as if you do a mash-up of reality from the point of view of African Americans in this country, you're going to end up with something that will say, "This is Black Lives Matter." It's not that people necessarily have started out from that premise. But if you're looking at reality, that will be the result because that is reality.