Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.

I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.

In the end, living is defined by dying.

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.