I am reading The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much like going on a journey. When I put it down to this, I feel as if I am also waiting with Pippin for the echoes of that stone down the well.

There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.

I do not miss my toys. I wouldn't play with them anyway. I am fifteen. I miss my childhood.

Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.

You know, class is like magic. There's nothing there you can point to, it evaporates if you try to analyse it, but it's real and it affects how people behave and makes things happen.

One of the things I've always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you'd never have thought about before.

I had said that Le Guin's worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they would be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it's rare in SF.