People don't like to be nagged. When people nag us, we instantly resist, but when the facts force us in that same direction, we instantly adapt.

I actually went on a vegan diet. So I was nagging myself there. I don't nag other people about it. It was sort of an interesting experiment, and I found it wasn't that hard at all.

Warming is incontrovertible, so in general, you're going to have more droughts, more fires. So I think events like that are the best thing that could happen for righting our ship and getting us on a safer course.

I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.

It was as big as a box kite and mounted on a pole, gesticulating wildly with moving arms, vanes, wheels, and propellers larger and small. I'd never seen it. It was all different colors. It didn't resemble anything in particular, except at the top, where there was a woman's head. Attached to her hair were three reflectors. Shells and chimes hung around her neck. Even with half the moving parts stuck, a gust blowing through it set off a flurry of fluttering and shimmering and ringing, as if a flock of exotic birds was taking flight.

The whirligig featured a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, and a man with a trombone. It was a leap beyond the spouting whale, with more figures, a six-bladed propeller, and a much more complex system of rods and pivots that made the instruments dip and rise as if the musicians were marching.