We were on the cover of Women's Wear Daily, which was hardly rock 'n' roll, but it pleased me.

My brother Martin is two years younger than me. There has never been any competition between us - clearly he was the good-looking one; he was also very sporty, and I am not a football player.

The thought of going on tour with people like Toyah Wilcox is just appalling. I'm certainly not tempted.

Don't see the point in reading ghost-written autobiographies, even though some of these published lives may fascinate me. The 'ghost' is always present, manipulating an interview into first-person singular text, and it feels like I'm reading a lie.

But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper.

My greatest surprise was that so much of what we think is common sense is just prejudice, and so much of what we think is scientific fact is about as scientific as the idea that the sun revolves around the earth.

There's a magical energy and power from the ocean. I was born in a room overlooking the sea, in the middle of a storm. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising that shores touch my soul. Science might disagree, but I think there's a difference in the air on a coast - the positive ions, perhaps.

For me, influences really come from everywhere: literature, comics, movies, anime, Internet, science, real-life situations. In fact, I think that writing is just about living.