Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

What I love doing is basically two things: I love flying airplanes and I love communication.

There is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.

When I'm writing it's as if I'm the observer. It's as if that computer screen there -it used to be the typewriter - just kind of dissolves and there's this whirling tunnel of mist and there's a kind of proscenium arch, and then there are my characters, and they say what they say, and I laugh sometimes in surprise at what they say.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life forms, and they call you crazy.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.