In the end, we’ll all become stories.
Knowledge is power only as long as you keep your mouth shut.
Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.
Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.
I’m a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.
The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it appears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it’s a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way.
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 is dedicated.
Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
For drinking Life there are two cups: The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy – Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?
There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.
No luck was dumb because luck was just another name for miracle.
I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.
Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.
Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.
If you’re a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.
How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next – if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions – you’d be doomed. You’d be as ruined as God. You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You’d never love anyone, ever again. You’d never dare to.