I haven’t written a whole lot of nonfiction, but what I have written leads me to believe that it’s an entirely different muscle. The ongoing paradox is that sometimes it’s harder to get to the emotional truth of something when you only have the facts at your disposal.

But the thing is, from the perspective of a novelist there is a brand of lying that feels more honest than the actual facts of an event. Lying as a way to move closer to the truth, or to illuminate ow something actually feels in a way the mere facts cannot.

Regardless of whether you believe in the Singularity, you will most likely experience the benefits of it. But we don’t really know.

Don’t repackage your fear and try to sell it to me as indifference.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me apologetically “I don’t read fiction,” I wouldn’t have to write fiction anymore. And I share that fascination with the truth. I’m not looking down my nose at it.

Your life has more blue in it than a James Cameron movie.

When you’re a child – and my understanding of it is very basic – but when you’re a very young child, the stimuli around you prompt your brain to form synapses. Once they’re there, they’re there, but if they don’t form by a certain age, they’re not going to.

I am not your God. Or if I am, I’m no God you can seek out for deliverance or explanation. I’m the kind of God who would eat you without compunction if I were hungry.

Whenever someone asks me craft questions like that I feel like I can give one of two answers. I can give the academy answer and say that it was very deliberate and I had a plan in mind and I executed that plan exactly to the letter. But this isn’t the case.

You could not be more correct. It does matter. All of it.