Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

I don't know why a computer game can't be an art form just as a puppet show or an opera is. I'm still interested in computer games as something I would like to work on someday.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms.

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work.

If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

An unrewarded value is more valuable than a reward with no value.

If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.

Every year, I'm depressed that so few of the documentaries I've loved break through.

Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste.

He's one of the biggest whingers in world football... he's a bloody eejit.

I have no fear, for fear is the little death that kills me over and over. Without fear, I die but once.

I get very cranky when interrupted. I snap at people, sigh dramatically and slam my door shut.

My struggle is to bring 'life' in 'file'.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

You want to know the secret of my success? Let me tell you about eugenics.