In Britain people might know me more for my comedy writing background, things like that.

If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects?

The biggest teenage taboo is being strait-laced. It's easy to tell a researcher you went to a house party that turned into an orgy. It's less easy to say you like eating toast and watching QI.

My theory is that we used to have several personalities, and now we're encouraged to have one online.

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning.

That's not something that we've gone in thinking 'Right! How are we going to examine that now?' It's just when you take a step back you see that they're actually all sort of in that mode.

Whenever anything nice happens in the world I always expect something appalling to happen immediately afterwards.

I'm actually quite pro-technology, but I'm a worrier, so I like to envision worst-case scenarios.

Technology by default became the thing that was a new thing that had swept in and was altering it everything.

The iPad falls between two stools - not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world.

In summary, our world is doomed.

...but now, driving past the billboard I realized that losing everything is death. A death that I crave and I don't want anyone to save me

Let the world kiss you, sister. Let the moment kiss the most raw and tender spot in your heart until you cannot help but surrender, open.

Confusion comes from trying to amalgamate several conflicting ideas.

The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.

If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide.

As you walk, you touch the ground mindfully, and every step can bring you solidity and joy and freedom. Freedom from your regret concerning the past, and freedom from your fear about the future.

For example, I was privileged to be working at the White House under the Clinton administration and had not finished my Ph.D., and I thought I was the cat's meow.

Lee tells his troops. After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

Harry Potter has been a fantastic experience and the fact it has made stars of us all is unbelievable at times - it really is magic of a sort.