All Quotes

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space. ”

The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I've seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back. ”

My father hates organized religion, probably because he hates the God who killed his little girl back in 1968. I find religions variously bemusing. ”

Everybody is probably guilty of something. I'm sure that if anyone looked into my heart long enough, they could say, you know, 'Bill had some unkind thoughts back in second grade.' ”

When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back and expand and explode those sentences, pack as much into them as I could, so they'd kind of be like popcorn kernels popping... all this stuff in there to make the writing dense, and beautiful for its density. ”

I've always felt I want to be of service to the world somehow. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, and I may never figure out how to do it. ”

The instant people specialize, it's in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon. ”

A common measure of poverty is how much money you have in relation to other people - that is useful as far as it goes, but that excludes the case of, say, a hunter in the rainforest who has no money but is not poor. And there can be a number of people with money but who can consider themselves unwanted or invisible or estranged from society. ”

Don't write for money. ”

Not only am I physically and emotionally attracted to women, I also wonder what being a woman would be like. ”