I say ‘Uhmm...’ a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it’s a CPU word. It means you’re assembling data in your head - spooling.

I have always liked the idea of Superman because I have always liked the idea that there is one person in the world who doesn’t do bad things. And that there is one person in the world who is able to fly.

Sometimes you can't realize you're in a bad mood until another person enters your orbit.

One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end.

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn't take a break from you.