I knew a man once who told me that I smiled at the wrong things." "Do you? "Only by the light of those who smile at nothing.

Much as I admire Tolkien, I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, "Fly, you fools." What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

You should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care.

Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods. Jon wondered who felt better afterward.

Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind.

...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." "...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.

When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.