2001: A Space Odyssey was a wonderful conundrum when I was a boy, with its giant concepts thrown across the giant screen at Indian Hills Theater. That movie woke me up in ways that I hadn't imagined, and I went searching for book versions of the same drug.

The burden of intelligence: you can always imagine all those wonderful places where you can never belong.

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

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.

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

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.

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.