I don't really have a lot of expensive tastes. What else am I really going to do with my money? Buy a little red sports car? Wear a lot of jewelry? Build a castle? Well... I might do the last one. Maybe. Eventually. But that doesn't mean I can't run Worldbuilders too.

Sometimes when I get up after writing, I'm surprised at how my body feels. Suddenly I'm not a lanky, hungry young boy any more. It's no fun putting on ten years and fifty pounds all of a sudden. Other times, I get up and I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm not a weary innkeeper, hopeless, with bones that feel like they're made of lead. I really sink into the characters that I write.

The thing that helps me do a good job is that I don't feel the need to explain everything about the world to my reader. I'm not writing a history text on the Four Corners. I'm telling a story that's set there. The setting belongs in the background for the most part, and it's easy for fantasy authors to forget that. That's one of the unfortunate parts of Tolkien's legacy, in my opinion. Read the first hundred pages of the Fellowship of the Ring and you start to get pissed, "Shut up about the Shire's museums! Isn't the world supposed to be in peril or something?"

Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart's yearning.

Barbarian that I am, I had eaten all of it. It had tasted quite nice too. Still, I took note of this fact and resigned myself to throw away half of a perfectly good cheese if it was set in front of me. Such is the price of civilization.

I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance.

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.