I don't put a lot of pressure on myself when I'm writing. It feels like if I come up with something good, or I come up with something bad, I'm not too worried.

I look back and think of all the times I've had to let things go in the past, and how traumatic it seemed while it was happening, but how my understanding of it changed as time passed - and oftentimes things that seem really difficult and traumatic in the short term seem a lot less difficult and traumatic in the long term. So I remind myself of that.

You have climate change and antibiotic resistance which are two of the biggest horses of the apocalypse, and they're basically breathing on our necks, and there's no political will or effort being expended to deal with them.

We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we've never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we'd always fall short.

I wanted to have a title that wasn't in English so that someone in France, for instance, could ask for 'dix-huit' or the someone in Japan could ask for 'juhachi.'

I think the most exciting thing is access to information. People's ability to document things and expose things that may have not otherwise been documented and exposed. All the information you want is available instantly, which is overwhelming, but I think can have a positive change on the political process and accountability for leaders and corporations.

When you look at the consequences of climate change, at rainforest deforestation, at antibiotic resistance, these are not necessarily political issues, but rather issues that have the ability to threaten our species.