I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.

I'm a fantasy writer. I don't do SF. This is important to me. If you're not clear on what genre you're in, everything gets muddled, and it's hard to know which rules you're breaking.

I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

You're all so obsessed with other worlds, you're so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you've never bothered to figure out what's going on here!

Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.