I'm not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.

I like to think that I have no single view nor any single situation that I think things arrive from. I try to give examples of what I think are interesting questions for me.

A lot of us don't want to be quite that serious about world problems. Our life is there to enjoy, not to be an eternal dissident, eternally unhappy with how things are and with the state of mankind.

Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a house-building business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called 'religion,' and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor.

I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.

I sell well now in Russia. I remember one signing in Russia some years ago where the bookstore had two strongmen to hold the crowds back.

I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is - a blessing or a curse, I don't know which.