I grew up reading Tolkien, and I love him. But I love him in the way that you love that rambly old grandfather. You have to sit through some pretty off-topic stuff before he starts telling his cool old war stories.

A tree doesn't make a thunderstorm, but any fool knows where lightning's going to strike.

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.

If you fall, you fall," Elodin shrugged. "Sometimes falling teaches us things too." In dreams you often fall before you wake.

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.

I'd love to get a chance to talk shop with Joss Whedon. That's pretty high up there on the list.

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