Wartihog put up his hand. "What happens if we can't read, sir?" "No boasting, Wartihog!" boomed Gobber. "Get some idiot to read it for you.

Books were despised by the Viking Tribes, as they were seen as a horrible civilizing influence and a threat to the barbarian culture.

Always sailing, sailing, sailing...never quite reaching.

But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.

Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak. Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.

We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time.

The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today.