Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.

I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.

There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn’t last long in nature. They’re too conspicuous.

I doubt that Canada will be seen forever on the international stage as Mr/s Boring Niceperson, as has been the habit.

I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.

Although from you I far must roam, do not be broken hearted. We two, who in the souls are one, are never truly parted.

These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.

Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice.

I was delighted with the film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth]; it almost made me want to be a film-maker!

The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?

Laughter may instruct but it may also conceal, defending the joker against anger and retaliation: a game is only a game.

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.

I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.

Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.

Some travelers think they want to go to foreign places but are dismayed when the places turn out actually to be foreign.

EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?

The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you're telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.

Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

God gave unto the Animals A wisdom past our power to see: Each knows innately how to live, Which we must learn laboriously.

Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.

I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.

Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips.

Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.

What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera - or an NHL game.

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.

I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

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