There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true.

In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.

Socialism and SF are the two most fundamental influences in my life.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.