I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest.

During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school.

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes