I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Are You Driving With Your Eyes Open? Or Are You like Using The Force?

Fear mediocrity, not failure.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria - when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?

I adore Susan Sarandon, she's just so cool, and brilliant, and beautiful. I just like her whole vibe - off- and on-screen.

Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer! List, ye landsmen all, to me; Messmates, hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea.

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

Education is a slow moving but powerful force

In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.

Sabbath rest is more than mere abstention from physical work; and, therefore, must include worship and Scripture-reading.