 My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer. |
| I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky. |
| As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times. |
| One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself. |
| There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane. |
| The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible. |
| I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt. |
| The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe. |
| Working is hard and distracts from having fun. |
| It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes. |
| My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer. |
| The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make. |
| I listen to music constantly while writing. |
| I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration. |
| I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people. |
| I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more. |
| God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause. |
