Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that is cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.

Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

No one is ever ordinary.

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.

Looking on the bright side of life is better than looking on the dark side of despair.

From a book you can learn the theory but it takes practise to learn how to live life.

Maybe the same essential download was also being delivered to other people—a massive, compassionate battalion of us—at the same time.

College atheletes used to get a degree in bringing your pencil.

I'm learning as I go. I don't know everything. I never had anybody to look at, nobody ever taught me, and where I'm from I didn't have any famous role models.

I was quite good at football once, although other than that my speciality would be maths. I'm great at sudokus and find all the spin-off games pretty easy too.

The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition.

It is this quality, the power of seeing order in apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men.

I'm lyrically driven, I'm not musically driven.