I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow.

Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. Each form has its pluses and its minuses.

My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that's nonsense.

You think you have the amount of money that is your credit limit. We're just wired to think that, you know? Until the bill arrives - a sobering moment - you think you're richer than you are.

Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera - or an NHL game.