I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.

I don't have a day job, so I read any time of day.

Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.