I've learned that I get blocked when my subconscious mind is telling me that I've taken the work in a wrong direction, and that once I start listening to what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I can work out the problem and get moving again.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

I've learned that I get blocked when my subconscious mind is telling me that I've taken the work in a wrong direction, and that once I start listening to what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I can work out the problem and get moving again.

For every SF reader of that period, Robert A. Heinlein was also a touchstone.

How long it takes to write a book depends on its length.

It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.

I was pretty much grown-up by the time I attended school in Britain - or as grown-up as I'll ever get.

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

The Internet offers an interesting combination of advertising and community by participating in the community you can become an advertisement for yourself.

Working within the limitations of the shared world generally made the writing easier, because I didn't have to invent any of the characters or background, which is usually the hardest part.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

It's hard to generalize, because they're all different. When I started, I decided to take as much advantage as I could of the freedom offered by the SF field.

The mass-market paperback, for one, is too expensive.

I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses.

I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.

I found college useful for a lot of other reasons. It exposed me to a great many influences I wouldn't otherwise have encountered, and gave me a lot of time with some very intelligent people whose thoughts are still with me.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

Now I have to motivate myself much more than I had previously.

That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.

I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

If you can find collaborators whose strengths compliment your own, the result can be more than the sum of its authors.

I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human beings to do other real human beings.

Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table.

I want a platform that, like a book or a magazine, I can carry into the bath or leave at the beach.

I now have to find a reason to write, every single day.

I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price.

The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.

I can't speak for the other authors, but what I hoped to achieve was to illuminate certain corners of the Lucas universe that hadn't yet been explored.

Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience.

Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

Some of my ideas were shot down by Lucasfilm because they stepped on territory that has been reserved for the movies. I didn't have a problem with that.

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

On one hand, to be able to go from one direction in the sky to study such an object to another direction to study another object, and on the other hand to be able to maintain accurately the position in space.

The more one listens to ordinary conversations the more apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take little part in the direction of the vocal organs.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

I have thought about Happy Days made into a movie. As far as the original cast not being a part of it, wow, I don't know who could be who!I just don't see it going in that direction. I can see the original cast doing the movie very easily though.

But I try not to become preoccupied with that because with whatever direction I follow, with whatever advice I've followed or not followed, It's landed me in New York, in a very beautiful hotel, talking to people about something that I love. So I ain't that far off.

No one could understand the bond between me and my brother. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another.

I am always more interested in performance and character depiction, and my direction says as much.

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

People, like sheep, tend to follow a leader - occasionally in the right direction.

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.

I didn't know Albert back then - I just learned to play that way. He and I were the only guys that played left-handed. Then left-handed people came from every direction.