I think we take the history we want to take in order to back up the stories we want to hear.

A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. I think that kind of thing is an abuse of history.

I’m increasingly attracted by the idea that there can be at least small pockets where life and character and beauty and meaning continue. If I could help protect one of those from destruction, maybe that would be enough. Maybe it would be more than most people do.

It's always hard for an author to determine his own intentions, especially in retrospect.

Certainly our cultural fallback position seems to be that our technologies will get us out of everything they have got us into. That looks like a magical thinking to me, but we don't really have a better idea.

Hope, like despair, is something of a distraction: it gets in the way of a clear view of the horizon.

The world we are in today is likely to end catastrophically, as many other human worlds have done before.