Mysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.

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.

Smile with joy.

Choose yourself. Define yourself. Love yourself.

Life is nothing but a transient dream dancing at the tip of a leaf called time.

No amount of regret can change the past. No amount of anxiety can change the future.

The more I come to L.A., the more it's amazing.

Yes, there's a lot of the blues in my playing.

Too much of our lives corresponds to the 'lost-wallet' theory of life. You lose something, spend a long time finding it, and then feel grateful to be back where you started.

A Nation... is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry, and a common dislike of their neighbors

To say that people would cease to come to California if they would have to pay more taxes is to underestimate the advantages of being in California - mightily.

Bouncing in the club where the heat is on, All night on the beach till the break of dawn