One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an "old" young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

There were two things going on: 1) I had already established in my own mind where I wanted to go with the next series, and having James around as a Grey Eminence would have complicated matters. He had had an amazing life and it was time to bid him good-bye.

Often I'll try things that just won't happen the way I'd like them to, so hearing that they're not working saves me some wear and tear the next time around.

You can only have one first born child. You may love all your children deeply and with passion, but there is something unique about the first born.

In the end, my reasons for moving down the timeline and introducing a new cast have more to do with keeping myself entertained, on the assumption that if I get bored, my readers are going to be even more bored.

The issue of the Betrayal was so central to that, I felt the need to comment upon it. My choices were to ignore the games and put them "outside" of continuity or to integrate them. I chose the latter.

One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an "old" young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

There's always going to be comparisons, and that's unavoidable. There are people out there who feel I hit my peak with Magician and have gone downhill since.

One of the key issues will be personal honour vs. the good of the many, and unforeseen consequences.

Neal had a couple of good ideas and they fit nicely, so that's the way I decided to go.

Also, it's risky to try to duplicate earlier success. Magician had a certain charm to it, mostly due to my choice of lead characters, that I would be hard put to duplicate.

Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I've had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I'll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I'd like to get it finished some day.

I'm a huge fan of Cabernet and Bordeaux, and am passionate about Pinot Noir and Burgundies.

If I leave my computer, I'm probably not going to get back for hours. If I take a few minutes to answer questions and go web surfing, then guilt kicks in and I get back to work.

Writing is hard work; it's also the best job I've ever had.

As a kid, I sat transfixed watching Ray Harryhausen's '7th Voyage of Sinbad.'

Either systems are in balance or they are falling apart. If people are acting in what appears to be a twisted way, I want to know the reason for that.

I don't like fantasy where a king snaps his fingers and suddenly a whole army appears and goes off to war - he's got to feed them, he's got to pay them, he's got to take care of the camp followers and the gamblers and the people who cause disorder.

I feel when a writer treats a character as 'precious,' the writer runs the risk of turning them into a comic book character. There's nothing wrong with comic book characters in comic books, but I don't write comic books.

I keep threatening to write a non-fantasy book, and they keep offering me the kind of money I can't refuse to write a fantasy. That's a good thing. I have to pay my mortgage, and I have to pay for my Chargers season tickets.

I won't say that writing is therapy, but for me, the act of writing is therapy. The ability to be productive is good for my mental health. It's always better for me to be writing than vegetating on some couch.

I've never worried about 'the reader' because there isn't one. There are thousands, and they all have strong opinions, from 'Magician' was the best ever,' and I've gone downhill since to 'The new book is the best ever,' so to whom to I listen? So I write for myself and hope other people like it.

Mostly I'm writing about people, so I feel constrained to take with me my view of people, my curiosity about how people choose the things they do and why they come to certain decisions in a certain fashion and all the things that drive most writers.

One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an 'old' young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

People like rules, or at least the appearance of rules, even in fantasy.

Science fiction is fantasy about issues of science. Science fiction is a subset of fantasy. Fantasy predated it by several millennia. The '30s to the '50s were the golden age of science fiction - this was because, to a large degree, it was at this point that technology and science had exposed its potential without revealing the limitations.

The issue of the Betrayal was so central to that, I felt the need to comment upon it. My choices were to ignore the games and put them 'outside' of continuity or to integrate them. I chose the latter.

When you talk about fantasy, the usual problem is that whilst you've got the world of imagination, there are no controlling forces.

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter.

There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently untalented writer cant screw it up.

Near the sun is the center of the universe.

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

The rockets and the satellites, spaceships that we're creating now, we're pollinating the universe.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Be universal in your love. You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

We can certainly go further than cats, but why should it be that our brains are somehow so suited to the universe that our brains will be able to understand the deepest workings?

The earth is a tremendous gift. There is nothing else like it in the known universe. I want to leave it the way I found it.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

As we get past our superficial material wants and instant gratification we connect to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to others, and the universe.

Today we no longer regard the universe as the cause of our own undeserved troubles but perhaps, on the contrary, as the last refuge from the mismanagement of our earthly affairs.

The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move; the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.