“It didn’t matter the quality of the writing— Callie’s fantasies about her fictional heroes were entirely democratic.”

“You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems.”

“Writing fiction is ... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

“People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and people who know the kind of thing they like and don't want their prejudices to be disturbed.”

“During all the time we were together, I don’t think I ever found out. But once I was with her, Ididn’t need to. We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn’t entirely understandthe other person’s obsession, it didn’t matter, because we understood our own.”

“Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.”