Writer

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.

People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.

My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.

The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.

I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.

A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.

Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.

Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.