It hurt, remembering. Hurt because there was so much I'd done, so much I'd yet to do. In so many different ways, I now realized, remembering had been a blessing. A brief respite in the twisted bloody mess that my life had become. But at least I knew ...
What I’ve always insisted on from myself is to do as well as I could, and keep doing better until I’m at least competent. Long ago I learned that to achieve anything, one must start where one stands. Or spend eternity waiting for the right moment...
Home. It's being new and old all rolled into one. Measuring your new against old friends, old ways, old places, Knowing that as long as the old survives, you can keep changing as much as you want without the nightmare of waking up to a total stranger...
When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived i...
You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when huma...
Everyone can guess what 'Corn Flakes' tastes like, even if you've never had them. But what, pray tell, does 'High School Musical' or 'Spider-Man' cereal possibly taste like? In this late era, we have reached the ultimate deracination between product ...
I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel ...
Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that govern the world, and then want to own them and keep t...
Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That's what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and know that they aren't alone in the universe. I want my words to act a...
He felt something trickle down his face and he wiped it away irritably. When he looked at the back of his hand, he found trails of red. He had never cried in his life; in fact, he could not cry with no tear ducts. But now, at last, he was. He was cry...
One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can...
People seldom think of soup for summer, so they are unusual - an interesting, unusual touch for the first course or for dessert. I find cold soups very refreshing. I serve them in cups rather than in bowls, usually, and let people sip them. You don't...
There's a scene I particularly like in 'Betrayed' where Shane has been shot in the side. Yet he drives to a small airport, checks out the Rockfort plane and flies himself and Elena to safety. Only when he knows they are out of danger does he allow hi...
It was the time of year when migrating crows wheeled across the sky, thunderous flocks that moved like a single veil, and I heard them, out there in the wild chirruping air. Turing to the window, I watched the birds fill the sky before disappearing, ...
I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the ...
She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what lightning is made of, for everything comes back to the we...
I have lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and ...
It's 2010. I'm forty-three years old. I've just turned in the final draft of what will be my third novel when I decide I want a tattoo. Maybe it's a middle-age thing. Or maybe now that my kids are nearly grown and I have a career in place, I'm finall...
I remember from my academic days, there were people who could never begin writing because they hadn't read every single thing on their subject, which is a surefire prescription for writing something completely unoriginal. And they became paralyzed af...
In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy ...
A body is a body." Viscarro shrugged his bony shoulders. "Dead, alive, alive, dead. I fail to see the importance of the distinction." Yeah? So you'd just as soon fuck a living person as a dead one? What's the point of the distinction? Oh, right-one's...
