I think that, like in my writing, reality is always a soap bubble, Silly Putty thing anyway. In the universe people are in, people put their hands through the walls, and it turns out they're living in another century entirely. I often have the feeling — and it does show up in my books — that this is all just a stage.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.

It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

He entered the elevator and together they moved closer to god

You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean before they came here I could stand it... But now it has changed. You can't go back, he thought. You can't go from people to nonpeople." - J.R. Isidore

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

In this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing.