I mean, I wasn't stupid. I knew we'd make money and sell a lot of Dune books.

I always had this non-stop drive. I had to keep sending stories out and every once in awhile I'd get something accepted or get the little trickle of positive feedback.

Each book will have a lot of cliffhangers, because I like that.

A moment of consideration often prevents a thousand apologies

Every spare second I would write, somehow. On my lunch hour, too.

Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it.

If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people.

The real key is time management and being able to focus on what you need to, on using every available minute to accomplish something that needs to be done.

One of the things that was kind of shocking for humans... was to come to terms with was the fact that, hey, we may not be the center of the universe.

Wouldn't you like to have an augmented memory chip that you could plug into your head so you don't have to look everything up and remember everything?

As hard as we strive, man remains a perfect imperfect being.

Dreams without deadlines are dead in the water. Deadlines are really lifelines to achieving our goals.

Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

Only the paranoid survive.

If your friend is critical [of your work], you have to have a very thick skin and a thick skin is something that only builds up after it's callused for awhile.

Only one in command: that's the way in the home And the way in the state when it must find Measures best for mankind.

I think audiences will always like bad guys who kill for no apparent reason. We just like to hate them.

Death is a dramatic accomplishment of absence; language may be almost as effective.

Both my partner and I did not get into cooking so that we could wear ugly chef's coats and stuff. We dress sexy in the kitchen.