I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Being offended by things is the world's big hobby at the moment. It's almost taken over from wearing goatee beards.

He sniggered. He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature, but, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.