"As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning."

"I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction."

"You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different."

"Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."

"Stand firm when justice demands it, even if you stand entirely alone. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"The time has come to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' It is the right thing to do. Every American should have the opportunity to serve their country, regardless of race, sex, creed, or sexual orientation."

"Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior."

"One of the advantages of moving quickly is if you do something wrong you can change it. What technologies tend to do is they tend to make a lot of mistakes... but then we go back and aggressively attack those mistakes - and fix them. And you usually recover pretty quickly."