If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes.

Child. That was a terrible thing to say to anyone who was almost thirteen.

He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold... It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs. -Can we? -Damned if I know. I can't. -Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could. -Can you? -No! -Ah-ha!

When you break rules, break 'em good and hard

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.