I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

We want to change from featureless caterpillars to become beautiful butterflies, and the change takes place wrapped up in our own little cocoons.

Listen to me, kid. It don’t matter what happens. It don’t matter what anybody thinks or does. All that matters is that you keep fightin’ and never, you hear me? never give up.

She sat in the silence that resulted in the absence of her words, feeling unburdened but not absolved.

I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.

Did you tell freedom hello for me?

Age demands respect; youth, love.

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.

I had the insane misconception that I was ready to conquer the known universe with Tähtivaeltaja. No mercy!

Words of encouragement fan the spark of genius into the flame of achievement. Legend tells us that Lincoln's dying mother called her small son to her bedside and whispered, 'Be somebody, Abe'.