When I was in school I read a lot of comic books and pretend I was in them and kids would tease me and call me names. But now I do the same things and people say that I'm artistic and cool and I'm doing the exact same thing I did in high school.

What I find cool about being a banned author is this: I'm writing books that evoke a reaction books that if dropped in a lake go down not with a whimper but a splash.

Being an author of banned books is cool I've decided.

When you're 14 anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2 000 fantasy novels you start to realize that some of those books well they weren't really good. OK let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.

In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with but which would just confuse everybody. So in 'Amped ' I focus on neural implants.

I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries to explore. My life experience came from watching movies TV and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool places that seem interesting people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.

My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books what's the purpose of reading and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular.

Comic books aren't nerdy. You'd have to be an idiot to think computers are nerdy.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past tweaking or embroidering I'm reading books about history computers or embroidery.

It's a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

I believe in communication books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the cafe to get my tea and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading then walking to the beach.

When I climb into my car I enter my destination into a GPS device whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember books to store knowledge and now thanks to Google I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind's collective memory.

More books more racing and more foolishness with cars and motorcycles are in the works.

McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.

I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.

We didn't have a whole lot of money when I was growing up either. I would always ask for magic books or magic tricks for my birthday or for Christmas and the rest of the year I either had to mow lawns or find part time jobs to help supplement the cost of doing magic.

I have had fans make me the big picture collages of the photo books I have had fans send me birthday cakes... sing to me on my voicemail. I have had fans flash me. I have had older fans give me their bras and underwear onstage.

The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend but often those which meet the peculiar wants the natural thirst of his mind and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?

Next to acquiring good friends the best acquisition is that of good books.

There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.