Novelist

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there's always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Gardening is not a rational act.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story that hasn't come out yet. And any form of journalism you're involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.