Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now the novelist must take a good hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

Oh I'm nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading and I'm nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I'm working on right now. It's a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare and it's going to be fun.

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

Before I was reading science fiction I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty until found effective.

After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time I was dissatisfied with romantic doom yet didn't see much way around it.

In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong I did a lot of comedy many dramatic films and most of all romantic roles lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

Before I became a suspense novelist I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

I bought a selection of short romantic fiction novels studied them decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.

I'm a feminist but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering encompassing love - and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

I'm not embarrassed about the novels I wrote when I was younger but I couldn't write them today because of my religion.

In the traditional urban novel there is only survival or not. The suburban idea the conformist idea that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

It's a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels and I love to have a long relationship with characters.

I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice heroism war politics and family struggle.

I was totally absorbed in the real world the politics the history the news and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel it was in fits and starts.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.