There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas and I like that definition but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

I have been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a long time since I was 11 or 12 I think so I understand it and I'm not at all surprised that readers of the genre might enjoy my books.

Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws ' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.

I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist whatever that means.

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle which is a bunch of crap.

I was raised on comic books and I love science fiction.

I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books and I've read quite extensively as an adult.

People and especially theologians should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course science is technical in many respects but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

The flesh alas is sad and I have read all the books.

The books are funny and sad and that's what people respond to.

It's sad when you can't make everyone happy though. It's impossible but at the same time you still hope. You think 'Maybe I can do it ' but you know you can't. But gosh if I had to rely on giving people what they wanted I would have had to write 40 billion different books and even then I wouldn't get it right.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.

Writing for children is bloody difficult books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.

I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.

I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell.

I wasn't smart enough to read relationship books when I was coming up. I learned everything the hard way.

Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship before I had the part.

Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison but I don't have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then only a few feet away in the cookbook section just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance but finding that they will read he is doing all in his power to poison their books.