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

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.

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.

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.

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

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

You are never really prepared for criticism.

I can't get enough adventure," Magnus said lightly. "And adventure cannot get enough of me.

I told personal stories the way [Bill] Cosby would spin a yarn for ten minutes. I think in hindsight it works better as a long story than as a condensed monologue.

The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

I just got called Nigel.

Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.

Either make your money work for you or you will always have to work for your money.

What's right is what's left if you do everything else wrong.

I'm really proud of the writing on Door to Door, and I think that's the Emmy that meant the most - the writing.