Wilkie Collins was a rival and competitor of Dickens. His novel Moonstone sold more copies at the time than Dickens' last two books. But that meant nothing in the long run. Right now, to be honest, Wilkie Collins is what he deserved to be back then: a footnote, an almost lost memory. And he knew he would become that.

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

Love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter.

Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity.

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind?

I'm very interested in the evolution of technology, and it's really the idea of artificial life which intrigues me, more than just intelligence - a new, evolving life form arising within our datasphere and coming into living relation with humanity.