The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.

And what's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life?

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.

In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere.

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

That's what in theory differentiates a writer from everyone else. You see and hear more clearly.

This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Murray (WN 285)