One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent.

Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet's chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn't happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth. Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.

On a fading summer evening, late in the last hours of his old life, Peter Jaxon-son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon, First Family; descendent of Terrence Jaxon, signatory of the One Law; great-great-nephew of the one known as Auntie, Last of the First; Peter of Souls, the Man of Days and the One Who Stood-took his position on the catwalk above Main Gate, waiting to kill his brother.

So, whenever I'm writing, I'm writing in the presence of all the other books I've read and I think we all are.

One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.