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.

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.

To improve as a player you need to not only know how you plan to win, but ... how might your opponent disrupt your plan.

It has often been said that [...] the Japanese [are] geniuses at taking foreign ideas and adding a unique finishing touch.

A favorite science fiction writer of mine is William Faulkner! It was an idea that came to me once, years ago, and I've never quite been able to shake it. This is facetious, on one level at least. There are telepaths in As I Lay Dying. But I think the most compelling thing for me is there are moments with him where I just feel these are not humans talking to each other. These are some hyper-intelligent, yet-to-be-born organisms. The way they look at the past without having any loss of knowledge – everything that ever happened is still here.

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

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.