Is there any relief from some of thesepressures that I've been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to afew of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to getwhere they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy. I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible dream.

The novel is a form of exploration, a way of understanding the world and our place in it.

The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.

AI is the new electricity.

Modularity based on abstraction is the way things ought to be done.