"I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time."

"What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity."

"I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Laramie', with Robert Fuller and John Smith. I used to watch 'The Lone Ranger', which had been famous in Japan as well. I idolized these cowboys."

"Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki."

"It's funny to be discovered by a lot of people who didn't know you before. People always used to say, 'Do you shop at Home Depot?' or 'Does your kid go to such and such school?' They want to know why they know me, even if they don't know my name. I don't think that's a bad thing, by the way I think it's nice to be kind of anonymously famous."

"I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories."

"My whole life had been designing computers I could never build."

"Political union means transferring the prerogatives of national legislatures to the European parliament, which would then decide how to structure Europe's fiscal, banking, and monetary union."