We have once again succeeded in destroying what we could not create.

How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story.

She ran out of her marriage the way a woman can run out of a pair of sandals when she decides to let go and really dash.

They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.

The worst advice? 'Don't listen to the critics.' I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they're telling you something is broken that you can fix.

I think the best writers are voracious readers who pick up the cadences and the feel of narration through a number of different books. And you begin by maybe copying the style of writers that really knocked you out.

I do believe that when we're in the process of dying, that all these emergency circuits in the brain take over. I base what I'm saying not on any empirical evidence. I think it's very possible that when you're dying, these circuits open up, which would explain this whole white-light phenomena - when people clinically die and they see their relatives and stuff and say, "Hello, it's great to see you."