Motivation is the power behind plot.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

Only in God can you find true fulfillment.

Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

I think it's time we all agree that gender stereotypes are simply the confabulation of our own mind.

Gwyneth Paltrow -- she always looks like she's about to cry. I wish someone would just kick her and get it over with. But I loved her in The Royal Tenenbaums.

In school I was always the funny-looking, tall, skinny kid that got made fun of because of my weird teeth.

Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.

When pride thaws, look for floods.

You can't lose with the Stuff I use!

I've lived in New York when I've had nothing, and I've lived in New York when I had money, and New York changes radically depending on how much money you have. It's the texture of life.