What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.

I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.

Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we've looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.

Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.