I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next.

How could anyone survive even a single day, if he didn't feel as if he was, in some little great way, needed?

For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week.

To improve as a player you need to not only know how you plan to win, but ... how might your opponent disrupt your plan.

A community is a small group working together. Community scales by adding groups, and building connections between them, not enlarging them.

The burden of intelligence: you can always imagine all those wonderful places where you can never belong.

A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.

A community that learns together excels together. We need to form communities that learn together.

Science fiction is really a rather tiny business compared with its giant cousin, which is fantasy.

I've always thought of science fiction as being, at some level, a 19th-century business.

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

Though I may accumulate a great deal of riches in this world, it is only my wealth of knowledge, talents, and emotional bonds that I keep when I leave.

You got off on the wrong foot. I merely watched you shove it into your mouth.

Whatever it is that isn't uplifting or educating your mind, surely doesn't deserve a moment of shelter in it.

I’ve never done this before. I didn’t go to human bars. Mudslides aside, I’m not much of a drinker. Club people are not my people. Now, book-club people—

We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

Design is a form of competitive advantage. People tend to think of design as good art, good visual language, which it absolutely has to be. But it's also about the ability to do systems thinking.

Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

I was obsessed with Tupac - like eat, sleep, breathe Tupac. During this obsessive love affair, I dressed the part.

There are four principles we need to maintain: First, read the Word of God. Second, consume the Word of God until it consumes you. Third believe the Word of God. Fourth, act on the Word.