The medical nanobots in my novel 'Small Miracles' tap the energy sources that the patient's own body provides. That is, they can metabolize glycerol and glucose, just as the cells in our bodies do.

I was only eight when Sputnik was launched, and at that age the boundary between science and fiction is pretty blurry. Whichever way the process ran, I've been a fan of science and SF ever since.

The biggest fatal flaw in most fictional portrayals of nanotech - what sends those books arcing across the room - is ignoring that the nanobots need energy to do... anything.

Science works as a way to make sense of life and the universe. Hard SF as my preferred fictional genre just feels natural.

The scope of what I have to say determines the length of what I write.

One doesn't just wander unvetted into someone else's epic interstellar future history.

Collaboration is a nice change of pace from the often solitary nature of the writer's craft.

It would help if human experts agreed on the meaning of such basic terms as intelligence, consciousness, or awareness. They don't. It's hard to build something that's incompletely defined.

Time travel offends our sense of cause and effect - but maybe the universe doesn't insist on cause and effect.

Motherhood has taught me that love is the best gift you can ever give to your children.

Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.

When you hold onto a script that doesn't serve you, you leave no space to write a new one that does.

Wars may be fought with weapons but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

I first had a version of this at a Japanese monastery during a silent retreat-don't ask, it's a long story.

A few of us who are around the sixty mark don't play that much these days and if you are taking on a couple of guys in their forties it is very difficult.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

The reference-points pictures should be shot and taken off one's system. But don't follow that always, create you own points

I understand that we are actually complicated people but we are also dreadfully simple.