Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.

It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn't mean you know anything about marketing. Or layout. Or editing. Or publicity. Or selling your books for foreign markets.Everyone can point to a few examples of people that have done very well for themselves self-publishing. But honestly, those folks are lucky as lottery winners.

No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna.

Fantasy is a genre that allows me to create anything I want. That, in turn, allows me to explore any sort of idea I'm curious about. I love it because Fantasy is a genre that asks, "What if...?" That's my favorite question.