Leaders should never, ever try to look cool - that's for dictators

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

I'm lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.

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.

Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.

There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I've made a great living doing the things I want to do.

You're mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund