I genuinely like the people I meet at signings or the bits of public talking that I do.

Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.

As I see it, a successful story of any kind should be almost like hypnosis: You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them in further with your second sentence and have them in a mild trance by the third. Then, being careful not to wake them, you carry them away up the back alley of your narrative and when they are hopelessly lost within the story, having surrendered themselves to it, you do them terrible violence with a softball bag and then lead them whimpering to the exit on the last page. Believe me, they'll thank you for it.

It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.

Our consciousness, a startling outgrowth of the universe, is possibly its most important part, the fraction of existence that can think, feel, marvel at itself.

My mother said I broke her heart...but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us...but within that inch we are free.