Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one.

If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.

She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.

Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.

You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb.

Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.