We wanted to write the first prequels as a story that anyone could pick up.

I always had this non-stop drive. I had to keep sending stories out and every once in awhile I'd get something accepted or get the little trickle of positive feedback.

Each book will have a lot of cliffhangers, because I like that.

A moment of consideration often prevents a thousand apologies

Every spare second I would write, somehow. On my lunch hour, too.

Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it.

If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people.

The real key is time management and being able to focus on what you need to, on using every available minute to accomplish something that needs to be done.

One of the things that was kind of shocking for humans... was to come to terms with was the fact that, hey, we may not be the center of the universe.

Wouldn't you like to have an augmented memory chip that you could plug into your head so you don't have to look everything up and remember everything?

Speak your heart. If they don’t understand, the message was never meant for them anyway.

Don’t panic, I thought. But already my breathing was faster, shallower. “You mean you can feel happy or sad or—” “Desire.” A barely-there smile.

Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.

If you improvise a riff and the crowd immediately reacts to it, you know you're on to something.

At home we ate fish every Friday, as Catholics were then supposed to do. Being Jewish, I compromised. I wore a hat when I ate fish, out of respect for my own religion and the fish's family.

Goaltending is to hockey like putting is to golf. It really has no relationship to the rest of the game.

Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors.

Men shout to avoid listening to one another.

The knee just isn't 100 percent. It's hard to be out there when you know that you can't play at your best and could potentially make it worse.

Success in Iraq will be a major setback for terrorists and a major asset for the security of this region. The struggle for Iraq is the struggle for the future of the world.