Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.

The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.

I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the reader.

I've realized that I love all forms of music and get excited when any artist goes crazy and creates something that is an experience.

There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part.

This is not a family of privilege by any stretch of the imagination. Our family is very low key.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.