I realized the other day that about the only author I genuinely read for pure pleasure is one of the worst authors in the world, a guy called Harry Stephen Keeler, a long dead American mystery writer. He was probably the greatest bad writer America ever produced.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

I think I’ll dismember the world and then I’ll dance in the wreckage.

I'd love to think that people in the future would gather in theatres, at conventions, and in darkened rooms, and read it out to each other.

Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story.

It's quiet. No cars. No birds. Nothing.' 'No radio waves,' said the Doctor. 'Not even Radio Four.' 'You can hear radio waves?' 'Of course not. Nobody can hear radio waves,' he said unconvincingly.

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.