Lester del Rey told me repeatedly that the first and most important part of writing fiction is just to think about the story. Don't write anything down. Don't try to pull anything together right away. Just dream for a while and see what happens. There isn't any timetable involved, no measuring stick for how long it ought to take. For each book, it is different. But that period of thinking, of reflection, is crucial to how successful your story will turn out to be.

Well, I think that as a country, we've drifted away from appreciating the importance of imagination.

The reader wants to see something happen between pages one and four hundred, and nothing happens if the characters don't change.

I want to kick-start your imagination and let you discover the places it can take you.

We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.

If I have the means, I have the responsibility to employ them.

Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.