“Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.”

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.

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

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.

I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities.

Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer.

Last year I went to a worldcon for the first time in two decades. I may go again this year.

The overwhelming triumph of the international multimedia conglomerate has resulted in less diversity within the field and has made it much harder for newer writers not only to break in, but to make any kind of a living while doing so.

The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you’re talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.

Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Music is an important part of our culture and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

Education is only like good culture,–it changes the size, but not the sort.

I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me – it resonated.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn’t very difficult.