I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone.'

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.

My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.

If a filmmaker is making a movie about a nice Midwestern family or a story that needs a very white character or a black or a Chinese, then I don't expect to go up for it. But I know, especially in places like New York, there's no excuse not to see various colors.

Sibling rivalry was, and still is to this day, rampant in my family. We were all competing for my parents' divided attention.

My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.

I want to work with the teachers' union. But as I said out there, we have to put the kids first and we are letting down a generation of California children. It's not acceptable.