“In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.”

Don’t try to write to the trend of the moment.

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal.

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

Living gives you a better understanding of life.

An apex is always surrounded only by emptiness

I try to challenge myself as much as possible, as often as possible.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

I write early in the morning, usually after reading portions of at least half a dozen newspapers on the web.

Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal.

So rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material.

The storm hit with all the fury of a woman who’d been dieting for six months, only to discover she’d gained four pounds.

Enjoying consciousness every now and then for a second or so before splitting up to become bits and pieces of trees and stars and french fries.

Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and shambles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.

I take the most wrenchingly painful moments of my life, brush them off and present them for the amusement of others. Luckily for me, my childhood was torture.

You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.

There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time.

Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.

I got a job at an amusement park. I like to make the rides more terrifying by throwing a couple of screws onto the seats.

The game of baseball is a clean, straight game, and it summons to its presence everybody who enjoys clean, straight athletics. It furnishes amusement to the thousands and thousands.