All religions are ultimately cargo cults. Adherents perform required rituals, follow specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally gifted with desi….

Life is getting better, but that won't stop a war if politicians and business people decide it's to their advantage to have one..

I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black,...an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive..

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers..

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure..

Slavery was a long slow process of dulling..

I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocia….

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feed….

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn ….

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in..

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses.….

It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear and he mentioned that he had ….

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status..

...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away..

Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never a….

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable..

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be….

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it..

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early..

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly..

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your….