The Simpson's in Piccadilly has been turned into the largest bookstore in all of Europe! How can they fill it? All of these purpose-built Borders and Chapters and every new mall that goes up has a giant chain bookstore with a purpose-built author reading space, whoah, what's gong on there.

When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.

The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience.

I've gone to big stadium rock concerts at some artist's invitation, and there's this invariable, fascinating and rather sad situation of concentric circles of availability. There are Green Rooms within Green Rooms literally within Green Rooms. There are seven or eight degrees of exclusivity, and within each circle of exclusivity, everyone is so happy to be there, and they don't know that the next level exists.

It seems as though everyone is going to the currency of celebrity. Everyone's getting their own account of whatever that currency is. That's something neat.

Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.

I'm a reluctant writer of non-fiction, in part because I don't really feel qualified.