I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?

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.

I think I got a complete picture of what the lives of scientists are like. My father is of the opinion that if scientists are allowed to follow their nose, eventually it results in something. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. What I came out of it with, in a non-cynical way, was that the scientific process is as messy as anything else. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just the way it is.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.

I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it