If the best way to learn to succeed is to fail as fast as possible, then the second-best way is to watch someone else fail as fast as possible. Watching someone else screw up is a kind of rehearsal for your own eventual downfall. A close observation of someone else's attempt to resolve a difficulty is a great way to acquire real-world insight into whether and when to deploy their method in your own times of trouble.

These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales.

Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.

Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.

Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.