I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood.

I think every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like ambulance on ambulances, the words 'everybody needs an editor.

The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.

We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

Conventional wisdom is invariably out of date. Because in the time it has taken to become conventional - to become what everyone believes - the world has moved on. Conventional wisdom is a remnant of the past.

In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.

Sneaking up on it sometimes helps: I've found I can be very productive for an hour before dinner, because there obviously isn't enough time to really do anything, so I can tell myself I'm just screwing around.