I like delivering a message, but what I find interesting is providing those details in a different context. Then the readers can make up their minds what it means.

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.

No one makes history, no one sees it happen, no one sees the grass grow.

I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences. How we react to these - how we exercise what some refer to as free will - is everything

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

I have Margaery Tyrell's - I didn't take it, I was given it - but yes, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] gave me Margaery Tyrell's wedding crown. So that is sitting on my bookshelf.

Devote today to something so daring even you can't believe you're doing it.

It was the only way to progress, to stop.

Oh yes, you can kick me And you can punch me And you can break my face But you won't change the way i feel 'cause i love you

Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?

I loafe and invite my soul.