Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

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.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.