"Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing."

"Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract."

"The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers."

"All of my characters have a glint of madness."

"I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual."

"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself."

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds."

"Faith in oneself is the best and safest course."