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

In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.

No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.

That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.

That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.

Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.

The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.

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 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.

The waiting that people do in Turkey to get aboard one of these boats is incredible.