I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

The minds of stone lovers had colonised stones as lichens clung to them with golden or grey-green florid stains. The human world of stones is caught in organic metaphors like flies in amber. Words came from flesh and hair and plants. Reniform, mammilated, botryoidal, dendrite, haematite. Carnelian is from carnal, from flesh. Serpentine and lizardite are stone reptiles ; phyllite is leafy-green.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.