I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

Property is unstable and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas the conduct of mankind is surprising.

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely surprisingly good fortune with readers and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

The surprising thing about fatherhood was finding my inner mush. Now I want to share it with the world.

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.

Everything that has happened to me has been amazing and surprising.