I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.

...where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?

I always felt sorry for the sidekick as a kid. They never got their due and it left a very bad taste in the mouth - they are defined by a subordinate relationship to someone else. I always felt like a bit of sidekick when I was a kid and it didn't feel fair.

The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.

No one ever got into science fiction for the sex or prestige. They got into it because they love it.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.