“In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.”

We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We’ve been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It’s really isolated.

I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.

I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That’s enough for me.

Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.

They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.

They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

We often do not see what we do not expect to see.

One day I’m going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do….is to watch these birds.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science.

In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.

With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.

You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.

If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

You feel like you and the boats are one, you feel that no obstacle will put up any more resistance than the water does to your oars, you feel that hard work and grit and mental toughness will always win it for you in the end.

They know they’ve won,” Carter guessed. “They’re making a show of it.” “Yes,” Amos said. “Well, let’s blow up the boats or something!” I said. Amos looked at me. “Is that your strategy, honestly?

Most of Set’s forces were running towards our boat, screaming and throwing rocks (which tended to fall down and hit them, but no one says demons are bright).

I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I’m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I’m just trying not to get into that sort of state again.

I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.

If the boat started shaking, we stayed on course and didn’t lose focus. That made the difference.

Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

The euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg – and there simply aren’t enough lifeboats to go round.