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.

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.

I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's Morris Minor. I drove it around my father's farm. But my favorite car is still a McLaren F1 which I have had for 10 years.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Always do your best. What you plant now you will harvest later.

The beauty of a main title is that you establish your main theme and maybe a bit of your secondary theme. You plant the seed that you're going to go water later in the score. And so having that removed just made it so much more difficult.

A beautiful bouquet or a long-lasting flowering plant is a traditional gift for women but I have recommended that both men and women keep fresh flowers in the home for their beauty fragrance and the lift they give our spirits.

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.