You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.
Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.
The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.
I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.
The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.
I'll take any life in which I can make choices and have agency, and America is not a bad place for all that.
How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones. . . Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?
Some campaigns are not worth waging if you can't win; others have to be fought on grounds of principle regardless of the chances for success.
Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve.