I think part of being human is learning to roll with the punches, to deal with any kind of personal or professional disaster that might crop up. You have to learn to deal with that stuff or not survive.

My main ambition as a teenager was to somehow resurrect the dark-minded writer Franz Kafka and become his girlfriend.

I don't write to create performance material; I write to make books.

Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.

I find it greatly disturbing that the Bush administration has used political and religious ideologies to influence national policy on science and medicine.

I'm a technological optimist in that I do believe that technology will provide solutions that will allow the world in 2050 to support 9 billion people at an acceptable standard of living. But I'm a political pessimist in that I am concerned about whether the science will be appropriately applied.

Popular ideas about AIDS are based on a hypothesis that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

There are good reasons why we don't want everyone to learn nuclear physics, medicine or how financial markets work. Our entire modern project has been about delegating power over us to skilled people who want to do the work and be rewarded accordingly.