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

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

"Romanticizing the past" is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future.

We like to think that the fate of the Earth and the fate of human worlds are the same thing, but we're not as important as that.

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.

In most novels, the landscape, or the place, in which the story takes part is simply a backdrop to the human action.