In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now.
I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.
I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.
I listen to music constantly while writing.
I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.
I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.
I buy way too many books.
I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.
Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.
But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.
As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe.
My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.
The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.
The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible.
You who speak languages, you are such liars.
One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.
In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.
God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.
Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.
I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
