I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

You know what they say the modern version of Pascal's Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God.

Widespread caffeine use explains a lot about the twentieth century.

Fandom is about fandom, it's a great big social club.

Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times.

Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.

For there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold, imposed by force, resisted or escaped.

I'm rarely grabbed by anything the way I was when I was 10 years younger. About the only relatively new artists whose albums I own are Beck, and They Might Be Giants.

On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.

The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan.

A year from today, it will be Good if your life is positively different, but GREAT if your life has made a positive difference on others

A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery.

Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.

Our people, though capable of strong and durable feeling, were not demonstrative in their affection at any time, least of all in the presence of guests or strangers.

Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

There's no way Ryan Giggs is another George Best. He's another Ryan Giggs

All hope is prayer; who calls it hope no more, Sends prayer footsore forth over weary wastes, While he who calls it prayer, gives wings to hope.

I didn't feel particularly close to my father.

I had this feeling like the solution to everything would be down there if only I could dig through all those clouds.

And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.