I do not care if they do not like me," he said. "Maybe then they will let me alone, and I will not have to stay in China." The thought visibly struck him, and his head came up with sudden enthusiasm. "If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?" he asked. "Laurence, what would be particularly insulting" Hammond looked like Pandora, the box open and horrors loose upon the world. Laurence was inclined to laugh, but he stifled it out of sympathy.

As a novelist you have just unlimited budget, total creative control. You really get to have your cake - all the cake - and then you can have a second cake if you wanted to.

I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.

All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore.

And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.

Justice is expensive. That is why there is so little of it, and it is reserved for those few with enough money and influence to afford it.

I'm an engineer and a writer. And I find that those two things are not uncomplementary.