Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.
For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.
Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‘begats’ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‘Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.’
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.
Freedom without limits is just a word.
I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.
Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
I don’t really plan. I’m almost intuitive about things.
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.
What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.
I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.
I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.
I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don’t know how to do it, and wouldn’t be any good at it if I did, so I’m going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.
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