The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station.

Cyberspace is colonising what we used to think of as the real world. I think that our grandchildren will probably regard the distinction we make between what we call the real world and what they think of as simply the world as the quaintest and most incomprehensible thing about us.

The future is not Google-able.

When I start writing a new imaginary future, I have no idea what it is. The characters arrive first. They help me figure out where they are living and I get to fill in the gaps with that and where we are. So when I get to the end of the process of composition, if I feel that I have really done my job, I have no idea what I've got - and I then spend essentially the rest of my life figuring out what it might mean.

We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.

His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.