I know I'm a better editor than I was when I began, twenty years ago. I'm less scared of the text, I'm less scared of the writer, and, crucially, I no longer believe that I have to leave my mark on every story.

When you never leave the literary biosphere, you forget how few people actually read books, and that in turn makes you start overestimating both your ability to make money and your relative renown, which has dangerous consequences: the first means you may end up in debt; the second means you may end up a horrid bore.

I've never really understood the desire to be immortal myself. The idea of both wanting to live forever in some form and wanting to stay young forever just sounds exhausting. It's one of those desires that people think they want but when you actually stop to think about what it actually means, it's really awful. One of the reasons that life is bearable is because it's going to end soon. One of the main concerns of fiction is how do we make a life of 85 years or so meaningful.

Sometimes the most difficult thing you can do as an editor is not make a single note - the idea that everything and everyone needs editing is, in reality, a fiction. I've gotten pieces where I thought, Well, I could do this or that, or change this word, but in the end, I leave it. Changing something is not necessarily equivalent to making the piece more true to itself, which is the point of editing: it's just changing it because you feel you can or should or must.

The big characters who occupy science, especially modern science, are all "off" in fundamental ways. I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. I wanted to pay tribute to that mind.

Much of an editor's job is in fact pretty nanny-like in nature: in many ways, you're there to protect and defend, to reassure and clean up. What I ask from writers is respect. I want them to respect me enough to turn in a clean draft. I want that draft to be as good as they can make it. I want to feel the thought behind those words. And I want it to be turned in on time. It drives me wild when I get a story that's obviously slapped together, and the same can be said for a manuscript; you should respect your reader enough to give her something that reflects your best efforts.

There are times I wish I didn't have a job, even though I love my job: I get to work with interesting, eccentric colleagues and equally interesting and eccentric subject matter, both of which are rarities. But, naturally, I would treasure having more freedom someday: of time and of movement. Will I always have a full-time job? I don't know. But I do know that I need to spend at least part of my week in an office, with other people.