The best thing about the iPhone is this that tells me where I am all the time. There's never a need to feel lost anymore.

I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative when I'm looking out the window, and my bed and couch have nice views of the New York skyline.

I was very, very sick when I was growing up in Russia. The ambulance constantly came to our house. I had horrible asthma that is easily treated in America, but they didn’t even have inhalers back in Russia.

If you’re not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong’s The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some.

That’s what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

I was a jackass in many ways. I projected that cruelty towards others, that kid whose hand I was wringing. If I could have hurt a hundred weaklings – weaker than me, and I was already very weak – I would. I was dying to hurt somebody, to pay it forward.

He didn’t love her. They were together for the obvious and timeless reason: It was slightly less painful than being alone.

Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph – these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

That’s what I always liked about science fiction – you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

Soon you will be home and in my arms and the world will reconfigure itself around you and there will be enough compassion for you to feel scared by how much I care for you.