I don't read a lot of the sports because I think people sometimes either build it up or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I'm not talking about acting or anything like that I'm talking about people I admire whether it's a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician whatever.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages sometimes I write them in a column sometimes in a novel sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

Golf is a game in which you yell 'fore ' shoot six and write down five.

I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it because I always want to talk about certain things in society.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

The writer is the person who stands outside society independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.

In a repressive society a writer can be deeply influential but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

Since I have come to America I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come but while living in America I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I've told several writers this and again I get back to it but if you want to make God smile tell him your plans.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.

I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not but the thing is I don't write about it.

I started in this racket in the early '70s and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America of which I was like the sixth president I was the first one nobody ever heard of.

I could write historical fiction or science fiction or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that I will probably continue to do it.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

Beyond that I seem to be compelled to write science fiction rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature both fiction and nonfiction.

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.

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.

Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth and second to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

I've started a company called Tall Girl Productions and we've got our first project that is purely producing not writing with a writer named Evan Daugherty. It's for NBC it's called 'Afterthought ' and it's science fiction-ish. That's fun.