I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous.

My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!

The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

You think I look like a teletubby?

I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it.

The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now...cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.

You didn't wake up, your dreams just changed gear.