After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.

We must be what we are, or we become our enemies.

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.