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.

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

If the purpose of literature is to illuminate human nature, the purpose of fantastic literature is to do that from a wider perspective. You can say different things about what it means to be human if you can contrast that to what it means to be a robot, or an alien, or an elf.

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 care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.