The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.
Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them.
The very best moment of writing 'Swamplandia!' was when I figured out what the ending should be. And even though I changed the prose of it, that realization was an ice cube melting in my chest.
The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
Blending consensus historical events and personages with imaginary occult forces is a strong recipe for counterfactual storytelling goodness that combines the best of two worlds: resonant history with wild-eyed fantasy.
The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.
One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from.
It's a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.
Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.
It's a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize.
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.
I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.
There is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.
Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it many trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to enter.
As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.
[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
