Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.

The tales of Elfland do not stand or fall on their actuality but on their truthfulness, their speaking to the human condition, the longings we all have for the Faerie Other.

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?

It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.

It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.

Get up from your desk and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed at desk level.