Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.

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.