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.

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.

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

You should never meet your heroes. Paul Newman... I was so excited about meeting him, but he turned up in shell suit bottoms, slippers, and a jumper. He was just so worn out and old, he wanted to go home.

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.

We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.

In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the victims and heroes of September 11th. As we commemorate the anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that the threat is still very real today.

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.

A zeal for the defence of their country led these heroes to the scene of action, though with a few men to attack a powerful army of experienced warriors.

I got to work with one of my heroes, Johnny Depp, and to see how he goes about business, which was really inspiring for me at this stage in my career.

Heroes always make the right decision; I find that seldom happens in my life.

I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.

I liked the Beatles because there was so much melody. Jimi Hendrix is still one of my heroes.

Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.

My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.

Yes, it's a prequel. It tells the story about how the girls were born with superpowers, but they weren't necessarily heroes at the beginning of this movie, so the movie is about the events that happen in their life to make them decide to be heroes.

We remember the heroes who ran into the burning buildings to rescue those trapped inside, and the dauntless passengers on Flight 93 who laid down their lives to save others, including almost certainly those of us in the U.S. Capitol.

I love milk so much! I make a point of drinking a glass of milk every day. So now anyone who did those milk ads with the milk mustaches, they're my heroes.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Well, there are conjoined twins in real life and we can tell a story about them so long as they're not the brunt of the jokes. In this, they're the heroes of this story; we love these guys.

The reason progress is slow is that we always expect other men to be the heroes and to live the heroic lives. But we all have hero stuff in us. In our sphere of life we can always live more heroically and triumphantly and grow in heroic stature.

As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.

I'm no hero. Heroes don't come back. Survivors return home. Heroes never come home. If anyone thinks I'm a hero, I'm not.