He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.

I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.

The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition.

Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world,” I said, “but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be—it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.

This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That's Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can't keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle.

True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good - and we all know how rare that is.

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.