I met Heinlein after 'The Forever War' had won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He shook my hand and said he loved the book so much, he'd read it three times.

When I first started working at MIT, back in the '80s, our writing department had a joint cocktail party with the Harvard writing department. It was kind of oil-and-water.

I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them.

With me, writing is 60% imagination, 30% people you know and 10% you don't know where it comes from.

I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

TED Women will focus on the ideas and innovations championed by women and girls. These cover everything from community development to economic growth to biodynamic farming to robotics to medical treatments to the use of technology for personal safety and peace making.