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.

Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

You get all sorts of people in the library, and the librarian gets it all.

This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.