I've noticed that nowadays I'm doing a lot of stuff on the phone and on the computer, which I usually wouldn't do earlier. And I can feel my brain being rewired: I'm getting anxious, I'm getting more manic. Now, I'm an extreme case because I'm old and I'm overdoing it. But still, it's really interesting that I can actually feel a change in my neurochemistry from this interaction with the technology.

I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.

I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid.

In my case, when I am trying to be "kind" I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.

I'm repledging myself to human-scale values. As a fiction writer, the best data comes through the senses and is then processed through many revisions. We have to learn to be intelligent assessors of the data coming in to us and what it's doing to our mental process.

It blew my mind, reading Swing Time, that I could take any sentence in the book, and it was one of the most beautiful sentences written in English.

I hear that in my head all the time now: 'Why don't you go and see?'.