As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

The most beautiful women in the world were African.

Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

I used to be treated like an idiot, now I'm treated like an idiot savant.

Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out.

I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.

...maybe it's only fitting that relationship that started with a lie would end with one.

Sometimes you have to go to the bottom in order to start at the Top.

I have been very blessed in my life and rewarded with good friends and good health. I am grateful and happy to be able to share this.

Enemies' promises were made to be broken.

I have drawn all my life, I don't know how to live without drawing.

Mama and Papa are more to blame (for delinquency) than the kids; parents should stay home and raise their children and spend less time in taverns.

George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.

If you feel like you're getting into a rut with a song, a night off usually fixes it.

If the NSF had never existed, if the government had never funded American mathematics, we would have half as many mathematicians as we now have, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

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.