"If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."
"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."
"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."
"We owe it to each other to tell stories."
"Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost."
"If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist."