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.

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

Time is money, but also money is money.

There's violence in my culture [from America's South].

It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.

People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary.

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.