The story is everything, so it always begins with a story. Research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?

I think that this vein is close to being mined out already, but I'll say that my knowledge of and talent for linguistics are quite limited and I'm not aware of being a hell of a lot more interested in that topic than I am in others.

[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful.

You don't want your readers seeing easy connections; it becomes a distraction.