Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.

When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.

I have to say that after some initial resistance, I'm now a complete 'Game of Thrones' addict.