I did not feel I could create a more beautiful or interesting Mars than Kim Stanley Robinson or Greg Bear had, so I turned my attention elsewhere.

When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Communications and left formal education behind.

Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

Words fly like stones into clouds and accelerate....

The way to get the mind of God, is seek to know the heart of God!

I think it is important to begin with a statement in your speech that grabs the attention of the audience. I try to make my opening line 15 words or less.

Probably my favorite thing about watching a movie that I'm in the first time is to see all the things I didn't know were happening in a scene around me.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

I found Donald Trump to be very attuned to what was going on around the world.

I think you take a job, you owe it as much passion as the job itself demands. And most jobs demand that you be totally committed.

If you look at the whole thing, I think the most gratifying thing is my kids, without a doubt.

Don't need cars cause we've learned to fly on Saturn.