Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.

Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.

My goal for technology has always been to reach a point where the technological mediation becomes invisible.

If you're going to immerse yourself in a project for three years, why not stake out a chunk of the world that is completely alien to you and go traveling?

A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent human activity that isn't considered pathological, we are outside of time.