Do you believe you can change your destiny?' he (Sajhë) said, seeking an answer. Alice found herself nodding. 'Otherwise, what's the point? If we are simply walking a path preordained, then all the experiences that make us who we are - love, grief, joy, learning, changing - would count for nothing.

What we attempt to do is not without danger. What we attempt to do may not succeed. But it is right and it is just. We act for the good of all.

There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers, and it is this -- the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.

There is no pattern the human mind can devise that does not exist already within the bounds of nature...Everything we do, see, write, notate, all are an echo of the deep seams of the universe. Music is the invisible world made visible through sound.

Lots of people have objections to prizes of all types, and it would be extraordinary if everybody agreed on anything that's worthwhile - they never do.

One cannot always marry the person one loves.

The dead leave their shadows, an echo of the space within which once they lived. They haunt us, never fading or growing older as we do. The loss we grieve is not just their futures but our own.