When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.

I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?

The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris-or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.

The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.