Maybe happiness is like a virus. Maybe it's one of those bugs that sits for a long time, so we don't even know that we are infected.

My goal for technology has always been to reach a point where the technological mediation becomes invisible.

Everything interests me.

I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.