The only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge.

And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package, but then it's not your birthday that I know of so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.