A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

I have never been a critic of science fiction as a whole.

I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.

I was forever reading outside of the field as well as in it.

I knew I was doing something right because it was selling so I didn't want to interfere with it.

I like to think that I have no single view nor any single situation that I think things arrive from. I try to give examples of what I think are interesting questions for me.

A lot of us don't want to be quite that serious about world problems. Our life is there to enjoy, not to be an eternal dissident, eternally unhappy with how things are and with the state of mankind.

So I wrote what I hoped would be science fiction, I was not at all sure if what I wrote would be acceptable even. But I don't say that I consciously wrote with humour. Humour is a part of you that comes out.

I don't finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them.

I'm not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.

Science fiction is very healthy in its form.

There is a great deal of cyberpunk that I admire, especially the work of William Gibson which I think is excellent. Somehow he speaks from his own heart and cyber punk is what comes out.

Once you find you can't walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.

I've always thought of absurdism as a French fad I'd like to belong to.

The absurdist stuff wasn't terribly popular at the time I was doing it.

It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven't written about Oregon yet, although I've been there 20 years - possibly I'm almost due.

I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

I don't much like to look back with the idea that I was doing it wrong then or I'm doing it wrong now.

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal.

As far as the mechanics go, working with other people on received ideas was for me a very interesting technical problem. I can't say that any of my collaborations engaged my heart, but they engaged the craftsman in me.

I was never able to write seriously about heroes because I was very aware that I was not one and that in my background there was not this heroic thing.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable!

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I think it is important to maintain a sense of self and confidence, not letting either falter for the sake of a particular part or project, no matter how great it might be.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.