With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were their words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else.

No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.

there were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

The nations that offer to arbitrate are the ones that think they should rule the world.

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