"I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects."

"What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work."

"I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science."

"The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning."

"It seems to me that romantic comedies used to be about falling in love, but in recent years they've really become just comedies where the love story is only there as a spine to hang the jokes on."

"Well, I can't remember not being able to read. I was told I could read by myself very well at the age of three."

"Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits, the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, the Banque Royale of 1719-20, the railway speculation of the 1840s, the great crash of 1929."

"The pen is mightier than the sword, and is considerably easier to write with."