Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

What's money interested in? More money.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

It's a guilty secret of a lot of writers, as you get older you don't read as much fiction as you used to, mainly because it's like you are deconstructing it all the time.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

Who'd want a pony when you could have the whole universe? It was far more interesting and you didn't have to muck it out once a week.