No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.

There was no name for the disease; his body had gone insane, forgotten the blueprint by which human beings were built. Even now the disease still lives on in his children. Not in our bodies, but in our souls. We exist where normal human children are expected to be; we're even shaped the same. But each of us in our own way has been replaced by an imitation child, shaped out of a twisted, fetid, lipidous goiter that grew out of Father's soul.