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.

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.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

Last year, the Assembly of the League, as a result of the initiative taken by the Scandinavian nations, further limited and clarified all the provisions of the clause prescribing the duty of states to participate in sanctions.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Let everyone regulate his conduct... by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty.

To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

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.

Every Christian will allow that sin is an evil, and that it is our duty not to commit sin.

Poland is an ally of the United States of America. It was our duty to show that we are a reliable, loyal, and predictable ally. America needed our help, and we had to give it.

Whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.

Spreading the news is your duty as a Christian, and there are many ways to do this.