Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.

His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.

I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, _x000D_ the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered-_x000D_ as a storyteller. A good storyteller.

I never consciously place symbolism in my writing. That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. Better to get the subconscious to do the work for you, and get out of the way. The best symbolism is always unsuspected and natural. During a lifetime, one saves up information which collects itself around centers in the mind; these automatically become symbols on a subliminal level and need only be summoned in the heat of writing.