Caitlín R. Kiernan

Society frowns on the kind of earnest and thoughtful intensity that creates its most enduring, beautiful works. It’s interesting, because it’s almost like a kind of institutionalized discrimination. People who try are weird. Pretentious. Even when you make it, even when you earn society’s “acceptance” of your weirdness, you’re separate. Celebrity is, in a sense, another kind of segregation. It’s still a matter of us and them.

Pretension is such a dirty word. Except all writing is pretense. Everything worth doing is pretentious. You’re damn right I have aspirations “above my station.” You’re damn right I’m going to stretch and reach for things.

And I may miss. I may fall off the ladder I’ve built for myself. But that’s just an opportunity to stabilize the foundations and build it higher before I climb back up.

I’m done apologizing for that.