My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that.

When the time comes to work, I work.

Booksellers are tied to publishing - they need conventional publishing models to continue - but for those companies, that's not the case. Amazon is an infrastructure company; Apple sells hardware; Google is really an advertising company. You can't afford as a publisher to have those companies control your route to market.

We have a curious relationship with 'funny' in the U.K. We love to laugh, but we also think that making people laugh is just a little bit second-tier, especially in a literary context.

In a social context, digital technology introduces you to neighbours of the mind - people who are separated by distance, but close to you in thought and interest.

I do public appearances. I'm bluff, hearty, goofy. I wear loud clothes, and I read the funny bits. I occasionally get taken to task for one thing or another, and I acknowledge my fault, my flaw, my failure, and I move on.

Names aren't just coathooks, they're coats. They're the first thing anyone knows about you.

We are bodies which think, and we're at home with steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical: that which we can understand with our fingers.

I do not propose that everyone in Guantanamo or its evil twin at Bagram is innocent. I just don't believe we should incarcerate people without trial and torture them or facilitate and profit from their torture.

Executive power in any nation arguably has more in common with executive power in another country than with the citizens it should serve.

In a novel, even if you put a country in the wrong hemisphere, which I've done, I can always claim it was part of the additional weirdness of the story.

I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good.

I'm not an absolutist about free speech. Intellectually, I believe that most of the time it's better to let things get said, argue them, and put lies and stupidities to rest. Practically, I know that newspapers rarely issue corrections with the same prominence they give to denouncements - and Twitter, by its nature, never does.

The First World War was a horror of gas, industrialised slaughter, fear, and appalling human suffering.

Peace is not a state - it is a choice, and you have to remake it every day. It's possible to get a sort of stability, a habit of peace, but it's like an egg balanced, spinning, on its point: lose your momentum, and your equilibrium is gone, too.

The arts are valuable because they increase our sense of what it means to be human, not because of any specific skill or ability they confer.

If something is a problem, it's all right to admit it.

Games don't cause racism. But the real-time chat makes nasty comments hard to moderate and easy to spread.

My childhood was full of shocks and alarums, and I had to work a long time to make a life that pleases me.

It's absolutely delightful to get dressed up for a lovely evening, but when it goes from being a fun thing to being a chore, and a chore that men don't have to do, then we need to think about it differently.

I like things that take you by the hand and say, 'You think you know about this - you think you understand it - but there's so much that you don't.'

I have no wish to offend, but I do think that holy cows need challenging.

No one should ever feel obliged to speak or to put themselves out publicly online, but I do think it's a good thing to do. The more of us who are women, making our work and just going 'Here I am, here's my work,' the easier it gets for everybody. It's a good thing to do.

Sometimes you feel like the people who invest in hate are winning. Then you just want to talk about love and what it really means to love yourself.