“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”

“One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.”

“Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.”

“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”

“There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.”

“If you haven't cried at least once while writing a chapter of your inspirational book, then you have to ask yourself if your're writing fiction.”