We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with f...
I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what yo...
We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.
We are all creatures of the stars.
I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we now take for granted is going to be utterly swept a...
This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.
That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life but in a new way.
You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.
You can only value something if you've experienced it.
There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.
In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I am on my side, she crouches looking into my face. Soft, soft touches of her paw. I open my...
All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are...
Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
She wanted to be acknowledged, her predicament given its value.
A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be, he said, obstinately. But perhaps I don't feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity?
You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.
...or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn't want to see.
Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.
I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.