Fanfiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don't do it for money. That's not what it's about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They're fans, but they're not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.

The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.

She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.

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

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.

We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.

Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world - a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.