I find humans tremendously interesting.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.

Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature.

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.

When I begin a book, I inevitably discover many things along the way, about the characters, their past histories and the political intrigues that surround them. This discovery process is vital, and I would not prejudice it by deciding too much in advance.

I find humans tremendously interesting.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events.

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

Self awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

I'm now happily remarried to a good cook, which encourages me to be lazy. I like to think that I'm a new man, but perhaps I'm not. I offset it by doing the ironing, though. She has a small farm in the New Forest with a herd of cattle, so she serves up a steak and kidney pie made with her own beef.

The thought of playing a New York detective scared the hell out of me. I didn't know if people would believe me in the role just because of my physicality, which made me want to do it even more.

White is actually one of my favorite colors. I have a white car. I love white.

Parents can't monitor what you are doing on Snapchat.

Games of chance often involve some amount of skill; this does not make them legal. Good poker players often beat novices. But poker is still gambling, and running a poker room - or online casino - is illegal in New York.

For me, marriage is about love, not paperwork. I've never been the kid who dreamed of the big white dress, the long veil, the fancy diamond ring.

South Sudan is one of the most hard-put places in the world.

We should not have either a blunt knife or a freedom of speech which is ill managed.

Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit on murdering your fellow man, but there's nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed.

I'm always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis.

All of business and all of politics is essentially fiction to those who live them. I have more experience with fiction than most senators because I do it all day, so their world didn't seem that foreign to me.

I have a lot of success and make a good living, but after while, you start going 'Why? Why are you doing all this?'

For no. 1, it's great writing, super writing. The second thing is that it's great chemistry with all the actors. We just all got along from the very start. Very get-go, we all got along. We just - it was just like we were all meant to be there together.

A farewell is necessary before we can meet again, and meeting again after moments or a lifetime is certain for those who are friends.

Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.

I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Our understanding, great as it sometimes seems, can be nothing but the wide-eyed wonder of the child when measured against omniscience.

God is being taken out of schools; children are not being raised in church learning the word; many parents are living lives unto themselves, exalting substance rather than Jesus Christ, and those looking for answers are going to church and finding the word is not being preached. There are consequences to these decisions.

It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.

I love that I can talk to my fans through Twitter, to cut out the middle man. Because I've done interviews where my words have gotten twisted, so it's nice to be able to have things coming straight from me.

The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face.