"When I first heard it, I thought that's extremely challenging, the vocal — it was almost hysterical, and it was so up there, the register, but it was absolutely fascinating. And I know at the time a lot of my friends couldn't bear it, they thought it was just "too much" — but that's exactly what drew me in."

"On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be…"

"What I said was "Here, look at all these marks I got on my body from different injuries. Nobody ever writes anything about these, but they always write about Mickey Mantle’s injuries." I wasn’t saying…"

"Like the intricately rational web of theology woven around the irrational mysteries of faith, the sober explanations of institutions for hoarding literary relics seem like elegant post-factum justific…"

"The sharpest peaks of the Ridge are the cluster of islets known as the Rocks of St. Paul, near the equator. The entire cluster of half a dozen islets is not more than a quarter of a mile across, and t…"