I'm not the sort of fellow who does the same thing all the time. I began using a lot of science fiction apparatus. I came out with the atom bomb two years before it was actually used because I read in the paper that a fellow named Nicola Tesla was working on the atom bomb.

I was being brought up on peasant stories; my mother came from Europe and she'd been a peasant and that was the area where the Frankensteins and the Draculas came from and it was entertainment for the people. Nobody had TV, and that was the way peasants would entertain themselves, by telling these stories.

Life at best is bittersweet.

I came out of school one day, and there was this pulp magazine. It was a rainy day, and it was floating toward the sewer in the gutter. So I pick up this pulp magazine, and it's Wonder Stories, and it's got a rocket-ship on the cover, and I'd never seen a rocket-ship.

Any kind of music can be written badly and it can be written wonderfully. I admire a top performer in any field.

My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that's why I, I believe in the individual.

A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.