One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.'

I thought, you know, I would probably not have seen that. On the other hand, he's obviously completely telling the truth. So, then what is that? That's - I wanted to explore that. And then I wanted to talk about how ideas are born. And the big question that the book asks in a number of ways about a number of things is that. How does a new idea come into the world?

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.

Well, we're still in the middle of it. And it doesn't show any sign of going away. And these attacks that were - that seemed so odd at the time, with "Satanic Verses," because we didn't have any context for this. You know, where did that come from? It seemed to come out of nowhere.

If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.