Maria Bamford

I was raised in Duluth, Minnesota, where you never say that you're cold, or that you're suffering, and you listen politely to people, even if you disagree with them completely. Then you say passive-aggressive things later.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about politics, but we gaze upon innovation with rapturous adulation.