Whatever people may say about my books - and it always amazes me when people don't like them, but sometimes they don't - the epigraphs have always been top-drawer. I think having that at the outset protects me from a lot of potential problems.

Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to per­severance.

One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at.

I really like the George Clooney of Solaris also filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky, before Steven Soderbergh: that's very obviously sci-fi, and it seems to me a great film. But whatever pigeon-hole you put Stalker into you would both be increasing the risk of disappointing people and diminishing the film.

I like these nonfiction books where everything that is interesting about them is lost in that catch-all description of their "about"-ness.

Nicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybody can wade in with an opinion without having to undergo the inconvenience of having to read the book itself. The more you can condense it, the better.

I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.