My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice.

And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.

One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.

I like to break left when people think I'm going to go right.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

Writing is a job: you must show up.