Music, love, death. Certainly a triangle of sorts; maybe even an eternal one. "The only people who can see the whole picture," he murmured, "are the ones who step out of the frame."

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

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

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many ways deficient.

Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It's the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.