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 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.

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.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

Um, enough apologies, okay?Just get on with being your badass self.

Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will besilent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied.

It's a sadness that has been knocking at my door for a long time, and I finally let it in.

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.He is sweeter than soap.He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace, which can't even bark...

You wouldn't want to be in a rock band - trust me.

Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.

To have insurance and have a diagnosis and to have doctors, I just felt it would be immoral on some level to complain.

I was a hoodlum. I was a gang member, and art saved my life.

Do you know why God subjects you to so many miseries? That He may bestow on you the riches of heaven.

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'