I write seven days a week, starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, including Christmas.

For me, a good thriller must teach me something about the real world. Thrillers like 'Coma,' 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Firm' all captivated me by providing glimpses into realms about which I knew very little - medical science, submarine technology and the law.

Transhumanism is the ethics and science of using things like biological and genetic engineering to transform our bodies and make us a more powerful species.

Futurists don't consider overpopulation one of the issues of the future. They consider it the issue of the future.

Technology is changing the way we interact as humans.

The thing that's going to make artificial intelligence so powerful is its ability to learn, and the way AI learns is to look at human culture.

Well, you know, in any novel you would hope that the hero has someone to push back against, and villains - I find the most interesting villains those who do the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. Either one is interesting. I love the gray area between right and wrong.

That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.

Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

It will appear evident upon attentive consideration that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality may best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests and cooperation in labor.

How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers.

These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.

All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.

During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

Growing up in the days when you still had to punch buttons to make a telephone call, I could recall the numbers of all my close friends and family. Today, I'm not sure if I know more than four phone numbers by heart. And that's probably more than most.

One trick, known as the journey method or 'memory palace,' is to conjure up a familiar space in the mind's eye, and then populate it with images of whatever it is you want to remember.

Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory.

Statesmanship is harder than politics. Politics is the art of getting along with people, whereas statesmanship is the art of getting along with politicians.

At school, I always felt the art room was the place where you could sit and talk. It was a place of solace. I wasn't the best artist at school by a long shot; it was more the understanding and the support that came from that room.

Never trust a hippie. That's definitely my motto.

I hate rats. I had a pet rat to try and overcome it. I even gave him mouth-to mouth resuscitation when he had a heart attack. But I couldn't conquer it.

Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make the attempt. That's morality, that's religion, that's art, that's life.

In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.

At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture.

Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

The rainbow flag is beautiful because it's about love. The Confederate flag is ugly because it's about hate. It's pretty simple from the art level: beautiful versus ugly.

We needed something to express our joy, our beauty, our power. And the rainbow did that.

The rainbow flag is a symbol of freedom and liberation that we made for ourselves.

It's not so easy to be gay or even a woman in some places in the world, and in many countries, it's illegal to be gay. You can be put to death. It's a global struggle. A human rights struggle on a global scale.

The rainbow is a part of nature, and you have to be in the right place to see it. It's beautiful, all of the colors, even the colors you can't see. That really fit us as a people because we are all of the colors. Our sexuality is all of the colors. We are all the genders, races, and ages.

Flags are about proclaiming power... that visibility is key to our success and to our justice.

A true flag is not something you can really design. A true flag is torn from the soul of the people. A flag is something that everyone owns, and that's why they work. The Rainbow Flag is like other flags in that sense: it belongs to the people.

When I was young, they thought I was from outer space. I was the only gay person they probably knew, and they struggled with that. Everybody knew I was gay. They just didn't want to talk about it.

All great art allows us this: a glimpse across the limits of our self.

Like most dictators, Col Gaddafi detests the metropolis. His vision of Libya is a kind of Bedouin romantic medievalism, suspicious of universities, theatres, galleries and cafes, and so monitors the cities' inhabitants with paranoid suspicion.

I've always said - I've always said I'm not, by temperament, a romantic about revolutions or given to revolutions. I've always thought that they are not the ideal way to change.

The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It's terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness.

To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society.

My best hope is that Libya turns into a peaceful, sensible country that has all the things my father and lots of others have been calling for: independence of the courts and press, a protected and democratic constitution, with different parties involved in a healthy and open debate.

Nothing makes you feel more stupid than learning a new language. You lose your confidence. You want to disappear. Not be noticed. Say as little as possible.

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

We have defeated Gaddafi on the battlefield; now we must defeat him in our imagination. We must not allow his legacy to corrupt our dream. Let's keep focused on the true prize: unity, democracy, and the rule of law. Let's not seek revenge; that would diminish our future.

Art is an expression of who we are, what we believe, and what we dream about.

I'm a very basic dresser. I'm not interested in calling too much attention to myself. I like to look cool without being too noticeable.