Tasmanian history is a study of human isolation unprecedented except in science fiction - namely, complete isolation from other humans for 10,000 years.

I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.

If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.