With fiction, I tend to get to my desk and start writing. Poetry I write in my head, often while walking, so that my poems have an organic quality, hopefully.

The definition of a page-turner really aught to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one.

That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love things with a passion and nobody bothers you about it.

Our response to the world is essentially one of wonder, of confronting the mysterious with a sense, not of being small, or insignificant, but of being part of a rich and complex narrative.

All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the morning light where time stopped long before you were born

The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony.

As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasn’t here. Before that, my parents weren’t here. And before that…

If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.

Poetry stands or falls by its music.

My poems tend to be more celebratory and lyrical, and the novels so far pretty dark. Poetry doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate tool for exploring that.

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak.

You never know what's going to happen in life.

....Love is not only wired, but elusive too.

That's the crazy things about lies, you start to believe them yourself." (pg. 342)

Self importance is man's greatest enemy.

When we walk towards the sun of Truth, all shadows are cast behind us.

The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing.

That would be cool if the earth's crust was made out of graham cracker. It would disappear just like the ozone layer, but for completely different reasons.

When you have too many people and you're trying to satisfy everybody's input, you usually end up with something so incredibly generic that it has no point of view.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

Good Dems are good Dems. They want a representative that really reflects their values.