“I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language. ”

“You cannot force commitment, what you can do…You nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role model.  Your primary influence is the environment you create.”

“A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.”

“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.”

“Beowulf stands out as a poem which makes extensive use of this kind of figurative language. There are over one thousand compounds in the poem, totalling one-third of all the words in the text. Many of these compounds are kennings. The word 'to ken' is still used in many Scottish and Northern English dialects, meaning 'to know'. Such language is a way of knowing and of expressing meanings in striking and memorable ways; it has continuities with the kinds of poetic compounding found in nearly all later poetry but especially in the Modernist texts of Gerard Manley Hopkins and James Joyce.”

“I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language”