We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.

The answer to religion is not no religion, but another way of thinking of it. Another way of being in it.

I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.