The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.

And I'm not as young as I once was. At my age, I don't have time to be bored.

Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.

I don't know if I've ever derived such an immediate sense of calm and well-being from any book as I did from 'Right Ho, Jeeves.' It was like I was Pac-Man and the book was a power-up.