It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.

Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.

But with the library, it's like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there's so much to look at and read.

I've grown up on a diet of metaphors. If young writers would find those writers who can give them metaphors by the bushel and the peck, then they'll become better writers - to learn how to capsualize things and present them in metaphorical form.

You don't have to worry about the future, you don't worry about the past - you just explode.