Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
If bigots behave like bigots, it's not a huge surprise.
I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.
The history of a culture can be determined by its untranslatable words.
Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.
What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.