We all know that Social Security is one of this country's greatest success stories in the 20th century.

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.

I think a big part of our attraction to sport movies are the stories contained within the sports.

I don't necessarily love the sports per se I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us why we care so much. It's caring about something that's utterly meaningless.

There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers novelists playwrights painters have been examining for a long time.

Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.

There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction whatever you want to call it - mash-ups gimmick lit absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.

I'm mostly a novelist these days but I have written short stories in Fantasy Science Fiction and horror.