You never know when some small thing will lead to a big idea. Travel is very inspirational - but it's in the ordinary that I find my themes of love and work and family.

People don't think their dreams amount to much but when I ask them to examine them for common themes they surprise themselves at how accurate they are! They see that their dreams have value.

All stories interest me and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice loyalty violence death political and social issues freedom.

Rather like Batman I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong good and bad and justice.

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.

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people yet communication complete communication is completely impossible between two of those people is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.

I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.

I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes not at all.

French architecture always manages to combine the most magnificent underlying themes of architecture like Roman design it looks to the community.

Shakespeare is all big themes like the most amazing love or the most scary war.