I Wanted To Give Readers The Feeling

Most Science Fiction Seemed To Be Written For People Who Already Liked Science Fiction; I Wanted To Write Stories For Anyone, Anywhere, Living At Any Time In The History Of The World.

Every Messiah Fails, The Moment He Tries To Redeem Himself.

A True Storyteller Is Really Good At Writing Himself Into A Corner And Then Finding A Way Out Of That Corner

We Are Accustomed To Repeating The Cliché, And To Believing, That 'our Most Precious Resource Is Our Children.' But We Have Plenty Of Children To Go Around, God Knows, And As With Doritos, We Can Always Make More. The True Scarcity We Face Is Practicing Adults, Of People Who Know How Marginal, How Fragile, How Finite Their Lives And Their Stories And Their Ambitions Really Are But Who Find Value In This Knowledge, Even A Sense Of Strange Comfort, Because They Know Their Condition Is Universal, Is Shared.

There Were So Many Pittsburgh Poets In My Hallway That If, At That Instant, A Meteorite Had Come Smashing Through My Roof, There Would Never Have Been Another Stanza Written About Rusting Fathers And Impotent Steelworkers And The Bessemer Convertor Of Love.