Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.

There's certainly more new SF available than when I started writing. That means there's also more bad SF available. Whether there is also more good is a matter for future historians of the field.

Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies.