[On book promotion:] The reward for writing well appears to be not to be able to do it for a long time.

When it comes time to do your own life, you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

Many of us write because we are readers and have grown up in a long tradition, and we want to be able to add to that extraordinary flow of interpretations of the world.

The pity of living only once is that there is no way, ever, to be sure which sorrows are inevitable.

All schoolchildren are hostages to red tape and fiscal insufficiency.

They are the kind of people who are embarrassed by money, a dead middle-class giveaway. Poor people are not embarrassed by money and are contemptuous of those who are.

When it comes time to do your own life you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

A sword needs a sheath, heh, and a wedding needs a bedding.

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

The air was stifling, but he liked it because it was stifling city air, full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music, and the distant sound of warring police tribes.

The spring of the New Age is here, bursting forth in perfect harmony, beauty and abundance; and nothing can stop it from coming about.

I'm not interested in being a wife. I'm interested in being an empress.

The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.

The public is often right during the trends, but wrong at both ends

Dad always told me that if you're going to work on something, it might as well be something you're proud of.

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.