I wonder at what point my life swerved to avoid that, and if that life would have been nicer than the one I've got.

Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free. . . . It's a dangerous world out there, filled with predators. . . . What would you prefer? A comfortable, safe, warm, cosy life in a cage, or an uncertain life of freedom.

In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.

I'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.

Routine kills creative thought.

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.

But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.