Look. I brought you here to give you a choice-" "You didn't bring us here," said Nick. "You're here," said Bod. "I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow to the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.

My bed was pushed up hard against the wall just below the window. I loved to sleep with the windows open. Rainy nights were the best of all: I would open my windows and put my head on my pillow and close my eyes and feel the wind on my face and listen to the trees sway and creak. There would be raindrops blown onto my face, too, if I was lucky, and I would imagine that I was in my boat on the ocean and that it was swaying with the swell of the sea. I did not imagine that I was a pirate, or that I was going anywhere. I was just on my boat.

I am an academic," said Professor Mandalay, "and thus have no finely developed senses that would be comprehensible to anyone who has not ever needed to grade papers without actually reading the blessed things.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art.

My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It's just where they think it will do best in the bookshops.

From meetings and partings none can ever escape. Nor from magic.