I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Your ability to form a strong intention, to concentrate, and to get and stay focused while feeling detached from concerns of daily life—relaxed, open-minded, and emotionally energized—are essential.

The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.

The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.

The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.

Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

Some people pay a compliment as if they expected a receipt.

We can learn what we did not know. We are not only good at destroying the Old World, we are also good at building the new.

Our civilization is shifting from science and technology to rhetoric and litigation.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success.