Science Fiction, To Me, Has Not Only

Time Has Not Stood Still. It Has Washed Over Me, Washed Me Away, As If I'm Nothing More Than A Woman Of Sand, Left By A Careless Child Too Near The Water.

I Did Not Know That 'poetess' Was An Insult, And That I Myself Would Some Day Be Called One. I Did Not Know That To Be Told I Had Transcended My Gender Would Be Considered A Compliment. I Didn't Know — Yet — That Black Was Compulsory. All Of That Was In The Future. When I Was Sixteen, It Was Simple. Poetry Existed; Therefore It Could Be Written; And Nobody Had Told Me — Yet — The Many, Many Reasons Why It Could Not Be Written By Me.

Which Of Us Can Resist The Temptation Of Being Thought Indispensable?

The Darkness Is Really Out There. It's Not Something That's In My Head, Just. It's In My Work Because It's In The World.

Immortality,' Said Crake, ' Is A Concept. If You Take 'mortality' As Being, Not Death, But The Foreknowledge Of It And The Fear Of It, Then 'immortality' Is The Absence Of Such Fear. Babies Are Immortal. Edit Out The Fear, And You'll Be.