There are only so many ways to experience pain. There are an almost limitless number of ways to inflict it, but the pain itself, initially vividly distinct in all its specifications, becomes, inevitably, just pain.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

Is it more childish and foolish to insist that there is a conspiracy or that there is not?

A lot of geeks are pale, bespectacled, wear dark clothing and don't get out much - the stereotype exists because it is very often true. I could pass for a non-geek but it would be inaccurate.

In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with 'Dungeons and Dragons,' so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.