Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week.

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing.... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef.

How could anyone survive even a single day, if he didn't feel as if he was, in some little great way, needed?

Science fiction is really a rather tiny business compared with its giant cousin, which is fantasy.

I don't believe people let things slide away. It's the nature of the universe that everything dissolves into oblivion and by every route possible, but human beings invest a lot of cleverness trying to cling to past events, real or imagined. And because we can't succeed, we get angry and frustrated and feel guilty. Except the Buddhists.