I love books. I want to read them, and I want to own them so they're always available to be reread.

The thing about having true fans, it seems, is that they remain loyal to their idea of what the work meant to them. And that might make them more exacting than the toughest studio executive or publishing boss.

As someone who went to school in the '70s and '80s, I can't say that I noticed much of a 'medals for all' culture myself.

Competitive sports may be where exercise becomes 'fun' for children who are good at it, but for those who are less talented, it is where exercise becomes not only physically demanding but also emotionally painful and socially humiliating.

The hilarity or brilliance of a forwarded link is inversely proportional to the number of people it's sent to.

I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to 'hilarious pictures' or 'brilliant games' to half their contacts database.

I've been a comics fan since my first hit of those gateway drawings: Judy, Asterix, and the TV cartoon 'Spider-Man and his Amazing Friend' - which naturally led me to Spider-Man comics.

More choice doesn't make us happy, and we understand that no one has infinite choices about how to live life.

I wish that positions of power dependent on education were as open to abused children, poor children, working-class children as they are to the children of the rich and successful. I really wish that were true.

I wish it were true that every child had access to an education that helped them reach their full potential.

We all know that the desire for perfection can get in the way of authenticity and enjoyment; it's the same with games. There's a completist part to many of us that can't rest until we reach the perfect 100% finish point.

I've only got anywhere with Minecraft by getting my friends to explain it.

Expect to be disgusted by your own early work. If writing is your vocation, if you hope that it might be your salvation, push on through the disgust until you find one true sentence, a few words that say more than you expected, something you didn't know until you set it down.

We urgently need to address the assumption bound up in our employment laws and custody arrangements that women are the 'natural child carers' and men don't really want much to do with their children.

When a marriage founders, this may well be cause for tremendous sadness, but it's not a failure of spirit or character. People change, their goals and dreams alter, their ideas of themselves grow, or they just meet someone they like better.

Twitter's strength - and its weakness - is that it makes it extremely easy to share every passing thought with everyone on your friends list.

While 'Iron Man' is tremendous fun, it's another reminder of the pressure on all of us to make ourselves increasingly perfect and a little less human. And that is something it is important to resist.

As a gamer, I can't think of anything more annoying for everyone concerned than playing games in a shared living room.

Just as readers often turn into writers, novel-writers often become novel-reviewers.

The value of the arts cannot be measured by its ability to preserve life but rather to enhance existence.

I got my first library card, for Hendon Library in north London, when I was two years old.

I think some people's brains have more of a natural bent towards God than others.

For years, I looked down on my mother for shopping at Asda, and now I feel very ashamed of it.

When I was 19, I wrote a novel, which was not very good, but I finished it.