I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.

Generally speaking, I'm much more in favour of penises entering vaginas than axes entering skulls. But the world seems to accept the violence a lot easier than the sex.

I like dogs better than knights. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face. He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinchingher painfully. And that's more than little birds can do, isn't it? I never got my song.

I never wanted to see half the things I've seen, and I've never seen half the things I wanted to. I don't think wanting comes into it. You'd best go all the same.

It was bitingly cold up here,and the wind pulled at his clothes like an insistent lover.

I am not going to get into it myself, except to say (1) if I am writing "boy fiction," who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings? and (2) thank you, geek girls! I love you all.

Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it.