I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.

Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.

I don't think I've ever been particularly scared of death - but scared of dying, the process. It doesn't seem to be a good way of doing it.

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

The satirist isn't just looking at things ironically but militantly - he wants to change them, and intends to have an effect on the world.

It's an ancient idea that the leader of a democracy should not be the cleverest but the most average. That's an arguable point, but the world has decided otherwise - except in America, where it still divides the country right down the middle.

Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing.