Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it...I have written because it fulfilled me. ... I did it for the pure joy of the things. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

I start work around 8 a.m. and usually finish around noon. If there's more to do, I do it in the late afternoon, although that isn't prime time for me.

I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

A person could see a lot without ever leaving his own living room. Especially if he had the right tools.

I can't see the future, but it's grim. The depletion of resources - we're living in this dine-and-dash economy.