Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.

Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense?

It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can.

Sleep is over-rated. Have you ever noticed how it's always recommended to people anybody with half a brain can see need to wake up?

He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.

When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.