Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

The futures and ultimate fates of the characters in The Snow Queen are profoundly changed by choices made in their own minds or hearts, as well as choices unexpectedly forced on them by things beyond their control.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones?

These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow the most narrow, conservative tenets of religion; or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

Everything born has to die, in order to make room for the future.

Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

What does immortality mean to me? That we all want more time; and we want it to be quality time.

For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

As for the historical inspirations I drew on in writing The Snow Queen, I suppose I would call them more cross-cultural inspirations, though they frequently involve past societies as well as present day ones.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, at least on the karmic level.

We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance... And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.

Moon is also a naive native girl when she sets out for Carbuncle.

Probably I chose immortality because mortality is a universal human obsession.

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning.

Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Fear of the unknown is a terrible fear.

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating all at the same time.

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

That the sea is one of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit.

Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken of the Sea.'

One of the unique things is that whether we were out at sea or in the middle of the water tank, a lot of times you just couldn't leave. Especially when we were out at sea.

I grew up in Newquay, on the Atlantic coast and there developed a love of the sea and boats.

On the other hand, if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to, I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

I've never been hurt by a sea creature, except for jellyfish and sea urchins.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner.

All handling by IPCC of the Sea Level questions have been done in a way that cannot be accepted and that certainly not concur with modern knowledge of the mode and mechanism of sea level changes.

The maid that loves goes out to sea upon a shattered plank, and puts her trust in miracles for safety.

The Baltic Sea is becoming more and more polluted. Not everybody living near the shore of the Baltic Sea is protecting it. It is the water of life for countries like Finland and Sweden.

For fear of dropping the troops in the sea, the pilots tended to drop them too far inland - some of them actually in the British lines. The weapon containers often fell wide of the troops, which was another handicap that contributed to our excessive casualties.

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.