The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world..

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some peri….

You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel lik….

We understand more than we know..

Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far i….

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and reg….

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win..

Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage t….

The trickle-down theory of economics has it that it's good for rich people to get even richer because some of their wealth will trickle own, through ….

I myself have 12 hats and each one represents a different personality. Why just be yourself..

By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would n….

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book ….

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow..

I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out ….

Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions; do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down ….

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the ….

I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no….

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gap….

Why aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the o….

As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structu….

The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the st….