The real world is horrible.

I'm now much more excited about genre distinctions. What I still see breaking down are more the hierarchical arrangements of genres. That is, "There is literary fiction, and then there are lesser genres." I'm much more clear on the idea that literary fiction is itself a genre. It is not above other genres. It is down there in the muck with all the other genres, and it's doing the wonderful things that it does, but to give it a Y-axis, to make it high and low, just seems absurd. I stand by that.

And I'm not as young as I once was. At my age, I don't have time to be bored.

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.

Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.

The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.

We have lived too long. The great days are past.