I'm convinced that imagination is at the heart of everything we do - in art, science, even astrophysics and higher mathematics. Imagination leads us to ask, "What if?"

Fantasy is, I believe, the great nourisher of imagination. To paraphrase Einstein on how to develop intelligence in young people: Read fairy tales. Then read more fairy tales.

I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

King Constantine IX of Regia had been killed three times and was bored with it. He wanted a bath.

If I do find pride, I'll not find it in what I was or what I am, but what I may become. Not in my birth, but in myself.

Evil cannot be conquered by wishing.