So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology.

I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction.

I had, of course, no model for that sort of woman being married, but I can make that up as I go along.

But in fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.

Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.

Having a mother who had been an aeronautical engineer convinced me that more things should be open to women.

I like the Beatles, of course, but that's when I grew up.

In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a character's and let his perceptions take over.

I can become very emotional about math, although I'm not that good at it.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.

When I was quite young, she was working in a hardware store, so I grew up knowing about hardware.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.

Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people.

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long.

My personal feeling about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real world, to our everyday world.

I used to not back down from a challenge.

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

No but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.

Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

But in fantasy you can make a complete break and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

We won't always have the strongest military.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

All of us who are convinced that our military needs all the support the government and public will provide are pleased that he will have his chance to do just that.

Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?

I visited the Chinese side last year. The Chinese are in a constant state of military readiness. They have all their nuclear weapons in the area, presumably trained on targets across the border.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

Since far fewer people are recruited to serve in a voluntary military, the connection between America and its military is increasingly tenuous and less personal.

In the recent years there have been criticisms levelled against Japan suggesting that she should offer more military forces to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world.

We know that the decisions we reach will have a profound impact on the communities hosting our military installations, and more importantly, on the people who bring those communities to life.

The military lead turbulent lives, but they are people like everybody else.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

An overstretched military undermines homeland security and our ability to meet threats around the world.

Everywhere that the struggle for national freedom has triumphed, once the authorities agreed, there were military coups d'etat that overthrew their leaders. That is the result time and time again.

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.