The zombie is in a lot of ways the perfect horror movie bad guy. It plays on so many fears all at once. The fear of predators, the fear of disease and the fear of loved ones betraying us - the ones we care about are turning around and trying to eat us.

[T]he one indispensable ingredient of science fiction [is] a belief in a world being changed by man's intellect, a conviction that what was being written could really happen.

The people who gave up their humanity to save their planet was always very interesting to me.

In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

I really like people who can do both drama and comedy and not some like middle of the road do both drama and comedy. I'm not talking about some guy who does these bland dramedies all the time. I'm talking about people that have done heavy drama and who have done heavy comedy.

One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.