I do not think you are in any danger of starving," Maximus said. "The surgeon said only two weeks ago that you are too fat." "The devil!" Berkley said indignantly, sitting up; and Maximus snorted in amusement at having provoked him.

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.

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.

Temeraire said, 'It is very nice how many books there are, indeed. And on so many subjects!

You can actually muck with history and think about what if, why not. What if there were dragons in the Incan Empire that allowed them to resist colonization? What if there were a massive dragon empire in the middle of the interior of southern Africa that decided to take objection to the slave trade?

I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.