I studied neuroscience at the cellular level, so I was looking at learning and memory in the visual cortex of rats. Neuroscience mainly exposed me to a way of thinking - about experimentation, about what you believe to be true and how you could prove it - and how to approach things in a methodical manner.

Most of us yearn for really intimate, healthy, in-person relationships. People have a deep desire to be understood, to be told that it's OK, that you're not isolated and broken, that this is part of the human challenge, and that there is hope. The capacity for online interactions to do that is powerful.

Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me... I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.

On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it's easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there. When they smile - right, you've seen people stop - all of a sudden, life is being lived there, somewhere up in that weird, dense network.

I don't see myself as an artist, as a writer. The sort of writing that I do, which is popular fiction, it's work. I have contracts to fulfil, and I have deadlines to meet.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

Multitasking, throughput, efficiency - these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination?