If the expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.
The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.
Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.
I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.
For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true.
My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.
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.
God's love does not love that which is worthy of being loved, but it creates that which is worthy of being loved.
If someone picks up one thing you've written, you want them to go, 'Wow, this is pretty good. '
The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.
If we would see others as they see themselves, our shyness would soon become compassion.