An overnight success is ten years in the making.

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

Washington D.C. is about 300 square miles surrounded by realty.

Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, "Oh, you can't do that..."

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.