Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer.