Novelist

Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

I tend to feel if people say they're going to do something, they will, if given the chance.

If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.

I'm the only person you've ever met who has read Longfellow.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

I grew up in the golden age of Flash Gordon and sci-fi.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.