I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.

I've been writing full-time since 1978.

The overwhelming triumph of the international multimedia conglomerate has resulted in less diversity within the field and has made it much harder for newer writers not only to break in, but to make any kind of a living while doing so.

I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note.

Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasn't difficult at all. Even as children, human beings fabricate elaborate revenge fantasies. We're not a particular species. Check out popular video games.

I see the Jedi mission as giving up a normal life in exchange for protecting the innocent. It's a life of sacrifice. There are rewards, but also a certain degree of sterility.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

I try to challenge myself as much as possible, as often as possible.

I usually do one con a year as a GoH and try to make the World Fantasy Convention for business purposes. Last year I went to a worldcon for the first time in two decades. I may go again this year.

There's certainly more new SF available than when I started writing. That means there's also more bad SF available. Whether there is also more good is a matter for future historians of the field.

Don't try to write to the trend of the moment.

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers. Given all the changes, both economic and technological, SF hasn't done too badly.

I write early in the morning, usually after reading portions of at least half a dozen newspapers on the web.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.

Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies.

Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it. I was going to be a lawyer, but I got saved.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.

Freedom is just Chaos with better lighting.

Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasnt difficult at all. Even as children human beings fabricate elaborate revenge fantasies. Were not a particular species. Check out popular video games.

Spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance.

An apex is always surrounded only by emptiness.

There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the '50s and '60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young.

That is the job of a comedian: To take unpleasant subject matter and forcibly, with his hands, wring the funny out of it.

One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.

A few years ago my goal was to try and get the goddamned album made, which put me in a real bad frame of mind.

If I'm a bad mood, I can't go on stage and smile.

There must not be favoured treatment for those occupying a position of public responsibility.

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.

I am a city child. I live at The Plaza.

I'm interested in locating the holy grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

I went through this phase where I thought pink and purple matched. To dance class, I'd wear purple tights and pink leg warmers and paint my shoes purple. It was really odd.

Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.

I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.

I feel like a lot of funders of documentaries today want to fund films that have a social message that is going to yield results.

I'm only interested in rites of passage stories.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early.

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.

My greatest success story has been my family.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America.

I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that's going on to the left of the frame.