When you say you grew up in Los Angeles, a lot of people think the west side: they think the glitz and all this stuff that I actually had no relationship to growing up.

Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.

Mostly she just loved sitting down and writing. For being a black female growing up in Los Angeles in the '60s, she was attracted to science fiction for the same reasons I was: It liberated her. She had a far-ranging imagination, and she was a treasure in our community.

My mom and dad are New Yorkers who left the tenement streets of the Bronx and came to Los Angeles when 'West Side Story' was real. They have the scars to prove it.

When I'm Los Angeles, it's work. That's what I'm there for is work.

The freeways create economic and racial borders in Los Angeles. South of Interstate 10 is one group of people, west of the 10 another, and south of the 405 North yet another.