“All through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her...”

“But also . . . I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with.”

“Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on.”

“Life has changed a lot, you know. You didn't used to get all this food inside food inside food when I was a girl. The other day I was eating a mushroom and found it had been stuffed with prawns. I'...”

“No, this is pretty much the same version I read," I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war." pg.57”

“I think her favorite thing about our . . . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything th...”

“A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those me...”

“Bringing you 'raisins and almonds' and words (from a Yiddish lullaby”

“I heard raindrops in the nightPattering upon my eaves,Like a pleasing lullabyEasing me back to sleep,Which I thought was odd a bit,For I awoke because of it.”

“Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.”

“Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.”

“Let my notes, like the most sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant vibrations of my brain: for it is precisely such vibrations that are sometimes the forewarning of...”

“This world has need of song and sword.”

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”

“I've passed up on many a thing that could have made me a big artist or something. Like, I was offered a feature on a Christina Aguilera song and I turned it down. It just wasn't right. She's cool, ...”