Eat your heart out, Rowling. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don't have readers like these.

With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.

The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.

Courage and folly are cousins, or so I’ve heard.

I'm not a writer who's preaching some particular philosophy or something but the big questions do concern me and I like to make my readers think and debate and argue with each other and look at some aspect of the world or some act of governance or war or power and have an angle they haven't considered before, and that's something I strive for and hopefully have accomplished.

The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.

You must put these dreams aside, they will only break your heart.