I would not know what to say to you, except this: there was never a map that got it all right, and truth and beauty were never married to one another for long.

A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.

I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head.

One cannot spend one's entire life running into bathrooms when danger calls!

A novel is a tricky thing to map.

A text is evolutionary by its very nature.

Writing a novel is always complicated, it's not like you snap your fingers and go, 'Ah, I know what I'll write'. For me, a lot of the time, I have to write and as I write, I learn about the story.

Part of being a writer is knowing when what you write is really bad.

Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.

Adults were pack rats of old, useless emotions.

If I were to sit down and count them, how many of my prayers were tainted by the seduction of greed? None, simply because nothing of that sort is a prayer.

Ego is a drum and the drum has to make a noise to tell everyone that that it is there!

I'm Irish and I was born on St. Patrick's Day. I'm lucky sevens.

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.

Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.

There are people who don't respond to color. That's what painting is. It's color.

I'm a rock star among geeks, wonks, and nerds.

Everybody has a story. And there's something to be learned from every experience.

Fortunate is he whose mind has the power to probe the causes of things and trample underfoot all terrors and inexorable fate.