I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).

And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.

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 on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.

I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.

I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction.