I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

I don't know why a computer game can't be an art form just as a puppet show or an opera is. I'm still interested in computer games as something I would like to work on someday.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms.

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work.

If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.

He bowed over her hand and kissed the knuckles. He'd never despised a glove more in his life.

No such thing as humanity without flaws.

Preparation will relieve you from pressures. Stay prepared and you will not need to worry about pressures

A star is born in the teeth of the Lake Michigan wind.

My candle burns at both ends

"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society.

Change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy.

The only reactionaries are those who find themselves at home in the present.

Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.