When you think about it, the end of the world is a little bit like death: We all know it's going to come eventually, and as we get older, we feel we see the signs more and more distinctly.

I am not an Internet superstar.

Creating fake facts does require a measure of haphazard research, insofar as they need to not just be possible, but also interesting.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies.

Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust.

My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen.

I would definitely make eggs for the rest of my life if I could.