The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.

To take the choice of another ... to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to ... for all we individuals to have ... our choices.

My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion.