Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.

You don't think I'm going to deflower you under your father's roof, do you?

If you think someone or something other than yourself is responsible for your happiness or success, I'd guess you're not that happy or successful.

Don't forget to take care of your health as you push forward to bigger and better things in life. Without life, a great strategy for your dream would be absolutely meaningless.

Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

People praise us behind our backs, but we hear them not; few before our faces, and who is not suspicious of the truth of such praise?

I love practice. It is when a coach exercises the most control over the improvement of his or her team.

People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.

Laughter... is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.

We're far worse than we ever imagined, and far more loved than we could ever dream.

I don't have a problem with being black in a white country or being with my people.