My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

When you think about the complexity of our natural world - plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example - a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.

I also am not particularly risk-averse - I don't mind jumping off a cliff if I trust the people who've told me they'll catch me at the bottom.

Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.

So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.

Literary influences are harder for me to point to, because mostly it's a mulch of all of my past reading.

People don’t choose dreams, dreams choose them. So the question I’m getting to is, do you have the courage to grab the dream that picked you?

Art cannot save the world, but it does help you understand the world inside of you.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

There's a lot of research behind the scenes that you don't get to see, but I have an instinct that my dad nurtured from when I was born. I was very lucky then.

True prosperity is the result of well-placed confidence in ourselves and our fellow man.

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

Even if you've had a negative effect on others in the past, you can turn that around and make your impact a positive one.

Ah, life, life, how madly, how cruelly it raced along your pulses!

If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can't buy it.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.