A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal - of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania - but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place. Animals are far more flexible than we realize. IF they weren't, they wouldn't have survived. But my opinion about zoos came after research. Initially I had the opinion that most people have, that they are jails.

The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it's like to be a woman doesn't strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.

I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?

There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.

Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.

Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that's why we should change it. I didn't say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death