I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.

A language is everything you do.

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

Anaesthesia, that's one technique: if it hurts, invent a different pain.

Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'