I have a principle I often invoke in class: comfortable people don't grow. Good teachers need to engage in the paradox of making students feel comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure.

If our writing is worth anything at all, then we have to put ourselves into it.

For some reason, I write about crash-landed spaceships quite a lot and my wife is sick of hearing of hearing my ideas for new tales about them.

If we are indeed created in God's image, then we, too, must create and then we, too, must rest.

That's true of every form of literature - each writer brings new things to it because each of us is an individual.

I don't read or write SF for cutting edge ideas; I read and write it for the storytelling, and every story is new. So have I brought anything new to it? Only in so far as no-one before has written about the characters I've invented in their particular situation.

For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning.