As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

The right path is characterised by rough road.

There’s a big difference between the head and the heart. Fear lives in the head. Love lives in the heart. The head thinks it knows it all but the heart is always right.

I am with you always. You just have to find me by opening your inner eyes and closing your egocentric mind.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.

Never put a razor inside your nose - even as a joke.

I had an instinct before and maybe now I don't have that instinct as much as knowing what to do, what shots to hit, where to place the ball, things like that.

The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity's main characteristic.

I am everything I am today, because of my past.