And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.

The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.

I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.