It's when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I'm afraid that's what's going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, "Oh, it's not really religion." I mean they know they're lying, and yet they're the religious people. There's something wrong there.

When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,' she said. 'And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.' 'You mean you haven't made up your mind yet.' 'I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn't like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.

Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.