I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.
The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.
Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that.
Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.
On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.
I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for?
I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.
No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.
Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.
I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.