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.

It's amazing how large the things are that it's possible to overlook.

What you can't pay back you pay forward.

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.

There may be stranger reasons for being alive. There are books There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.

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.

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.