As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

I want to have all that scientific information that we're building be used in designing the future so that people who make geographic decisions - and here it's not just land-use planners, but it's everyone: foresters, transportation engineers, people who buy a house - can analyze all of these information layers and design a future.

Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it...

That's what we do in this country. That's the American Dream. That's freedom and I'll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.

As a novelist I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.