To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

I work with wood a lot. I like building. I think of building. I would love to buy land on some water somewhere and build a house. That'd be nice.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.