I was not a natural. . . . This is the story of becoming . . . the Hard Way.

For a Hero cannot triumph all the time. Sometimes he will be defeated, and how he faces that defeat is a test of his character.

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic.

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

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.

The Hero cares not for a wild winter's storm. For it carries him swift on the back of the storm. All may be lost and our hearts may be worn, but a Hero fights forever.