Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.

A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.

You write to be read. That is the bottom line.

I believe that culture begins in the cradle . . .To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future.

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.

Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.