I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse.

I'm astonished how little fright I have of my own imagination. It really does baffle me that I don't get more scared because I'm capable of thinking up things that are so awful. On any given day I can imagine the worst.

I can't point to a moment or incident that made me see that this business, this putting down words on paper, was what I would do for the rest of my lucid life. But apparently, that is my calling.

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

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.

A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.

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.