In effect, I grew up in a sort of timewarp, a place where times are scrambled up. There are elements of my childhood that look to me now, in memory more like the 1940s or the 1950s than the 1960s. Jack [Womack] says that that made us science fiction writers, because we grew up experiencing a kind of time travel.

His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.(Speaking about Ronald Reagan)

We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.

I'm very primitive in terms of economics. The kind of new business in which stock gets more valuable because the company grows, but there must be limits to growth. But if publishing is expanding to fill that retail space, it seems like there may be a necessary and unpleasant correction waiting down the road. How many books to people WANT?

Laney had recently noticed that the only people who had titles that clearly described their jobs had jobs he wouldn't have wanted.

Generation X is dead. It has come to mean anyone aged 13 to 55 years old.

The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.