The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring -- all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims... for what?

The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.

Ben Adaephon Delat," Pearl said plaintively, "see the last who comes. You send me to my death." "I know," Quick Ben whispered. "Flee, then. I will hold them enough to ensure your escape no more." Quick Ben sank down past the roof. Before he passed from sight Pearl spoke again. "Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?" "Yes" he replied softly, then pivoted and dropped down into darkness.

War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life.

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.