I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread.

I am diagnosed with not having enough insanely-addictive drugs coursing through my body.

I thought I was raptured up into the air today; turns out, it was just my gas oven exploding.

I lie around and play guitar, that's something I do for sure. In fact that's all I do, I think.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

Whatever it is your heart desires, please go for it, it's yours to have.

The brain's preferred source of fuel is glucose/carbohydrates. And when you go on a low-carb/high-protein diet, your brain is using low-octane fuel. You'll be a little groggy, a little grumpy.

What i do in my personal time is about me. if other people dont agree, then it doesn't matter 'cos it's my opinion and that's what counts at the end of the day.

I'm not a natural reader but there are books I'll read and read again.

If I told my parents that I was going to do that [ to be really counsel to a Prime Minister] when I was kid, they would probably put me in therapy.