As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.

I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.

As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all!

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

'Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised.

I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.

I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Escape is a commodity like anything else.

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

Never play anything that don't sound right. You might not make any money, but at least you won't get hostile with yourself.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

I remember him watching me through the crack of a door singing with a hairbrush. I was in front of his mirror. I think he wanted me to sing. He would get me on the table and make me sing sometimes or play the piano. He was very encouraging on that front.

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

You have to like the characters you play.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

Well, I play Jews and parrots. Parrots are how I've branched out.

We just have to get it going and play hard every time out.

Art is an expression of who you are. Parts that I play are my sculptures.