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 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.

The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.

But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

Perhaps it's the people whose lives have taken sudden new twists - people who have learned to embrace the creative possibilities of change - who stand the best chance of penetrating life's mysteries.

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.

My parents gave me stability and a belief in myself and in all the possibilities life has to offer. I was told the only limitations I would ever face were those I placed upon myself.

Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.

Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

The possibilities in sci-fi are wonderful. The subject is bigger than everything we know.

I believed totally in the possibilities implied in the series. I never thought of it as fantasy. Far from it.

And we will accept the creation of the Iberian Federation of a socialist republic which will give each region the right to construct its life in accordance with its economic possibilities and political preponderance.

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

So I, I knew something in a business sense about semiconductors and I appreciated their possibilities.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

If you love your life, you have to fight. If you believe in life and progress and possibilities, you have no choice.

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

I owe a debt of gratitude to two other living Justices. Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg paved the way for me and so many other women in my generation. Their pioneering lives have created boundless possibilities for women in the law. I thank them for their inspiration and also for the personal kindnesses they have shown me.

We believe the currently one cannot speak of a revolutionary situation, just as there is no concrete possibilities of an immediate and comprehensive assumption of power by the people.

A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game.