If the seventies were bulbous, and the eighties sharp, the nineties were nothing but bogus.

We've clearly entered a period in which the analog of text is no longer important or relevant. All text will be electronic. I accept that fact. My house has thousands of books in it, and I've started to look at them completely differently. They now seem to me to be like antiquarian objects. Their use value has become negligible to me because I'm perfectly happy to read on an e-reader.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

If you believe something, you can have a morality that means something as well. You can feel recognized as an individual within the universe; it can give meaning to who you are.

I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.

It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.

In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.