I always thought superintelligence was a long way off and we could worry about it later, and the problem for now is just to make these more intelligent. I wish I'd thought sooner about what was going to happen.

I always felt like I could blow it and nothing would never happen until this happened.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people, and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television.

Writing before dawn began as a necessity—I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, “Mama”—and that was always around five in the morning. Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before.

it's not profound regret. It's just a wiping up of tiny, little messes that you didn't recognize as a mess when they were going on

I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, “Well, that’s a ritual.” And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.