“The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet s...” — Joan D. Vinge Quote

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

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.

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.

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 must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

One of the things I constantly think about as a writer is the way in which people are full of contradictions - there's all this contradictory information inside a human personality.

I am drawn to characters so full of internal contradictions. Idi Amin was one. I loved writing him.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.