Spotted this gem in Michael Swanwick’s interview with Rick Lkeffel in the World Fantasy Convention program book:

“As a writer, I consciously try to make what I write exciting for the reader — to give him or her more than just a really well-written change on something they’ve read before. I try to give each story something that the reader has never encountered before. Something as big and obvious and wonderful as a giant striding the downs with dinosaurs and tribes of stone-age elves living in the forests atop his head is worth any number of polished and lapidarian phrases.”

Word.