I suppose I do the Japanese because I just don't know China. Chinese popular culture has never evoked that instant of, "Whoah! What's that?" that I have with Japanese popular culture.

I can see television much more easily than I can see features, because the economy and politics of making big, big features seems to me to be narrowing even from what it was.

You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

The culture is still there, and people are still doing it. I imagine some people are doing it very well indeed. As for me, it definitely was my native literary culture. Science fiction was where I'm from, but on the way to now, I went through a lot of other territory, and I wasn't really that culturally conventional an SF writer when I started.

Three in the morning. Making yourself a cup of coffee in the dark, using a flashlight when you pour the boiling water.

What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger.