Some people say 'I want to be a writer,' and some people say, 'I want to write.'

Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.

Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.

I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.

Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.