I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you. When you opened your gates to me, I was home.

I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.

Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born. Here I am no longer my own secret. Will you let me stay?

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there

...that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.