The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.

I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.

Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.

It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.

Humor is rare in science fiction... there's so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it.

Science fiction is like a blender - you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience.

Scientific studies about relationships fascinate me, and I devour them hungrily, especially when they give big, fancy-sounding names to everyday experiences.

Science fiction, in its purest form, for me, it works the best when it's being used as metaphor to look at something from a one-step-removed process, to give a little objectivity and insight into something that, if you were applying it on the face of it, we'd all be too close to.