The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris-or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.

It should be totally fine to question the objectivity of scientists and the power structures in scientific institutions. The physical laws of the universe are objective, but human beings in any context are not. That includes with regard to science. To some extent, the supposed objectivity of science has given a lot of extra cover to very subjective and eccentric approaches to exploring aspects of ourselves and the universe around us.

I find myself in this bizarre position in which everything I write and talk about is pretty much about this issue, the environment. It feels a little too comfortable, because at the end of the day I can rationalize that I'm doing my share. I don't know if I actually am, I don't know if I should be more of an activist than I am. But at the end of the day, everybody needs to do those things that they're most likely to continue doing, and that aren't going to burn them out.

A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.

It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.