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.

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.

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.

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology.

If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly.

About 90 percent of the downtime comes from, at most, 10 percent of the defects.

Nobody really even knows with whom the US is at war, or where. Everyone just knows that it is vital that it continue in unlimited form indefinitely.

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

The belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world.

I can tell you there are rewards that go far beyond money and public acclaim and awards.

Hard times produce your greatest gifts.

[Donald Trump] doesn't have the money to run commercials and I launched into a tirade on money in politics.

Imagine if you have a million views on a show and they say it's a hit on some cable networks. I could put out a piece of content that has 20 million views.

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.