I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town.

We live in an age of seriously crap mass clothing. They've made a science of it.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

I have always been intensely uncomfortable with the idea of a science fiction writer as prophet. Not that there haven't been science fiction writers who think of themselves as having some sort of prophetic role, but when I think of that, I always think of H.G. Wells - he would think of what was going to happen, and he would imagine how it would happen, and then he would create a fiction to illustrate the idea that he'd had. And no part of my process has ever resembled that at all.

I don't much live my life as if I was living in a Raymond Chandler novel, which is probably a good thing.

I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.

I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.