If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.

Bin Laden was born filthy rich and died in a rich man's house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications.

Science fiction is where I started out, really. When I was a kid, I was a complete addict of science fiction. It was one of my earliest interests as a writer, and I've just taken a long time to circle back around to it.

I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.

Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?

They lived in a great city, a metropolis of many narratives that converged briefly and then separated for ever, discovering their different dooms in that crowd of stories through which all of us, following our own destinies, had to push and shove to find our way through, or out.