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.

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.

Now you're an adult, Katya!" he'd said, picking her up under the armpits like he'd been doing since she'd been born.

The key to contentment was to never ask why

That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.

Its's just that... this is the realest thing I've had in a long time and it scares me a bit.

A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water

A computer is a machine for constructing mappings from input to output.

They always want me to play myself and that's a big snooze.

The saddest people I've met in my life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all .

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

The biggest nationalist in Russia: that's me.