Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

Some People think 'coven' is a word for a group of witches, and it's true that's what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches is 'an argument'.

They were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.

The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has it's own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.

A police procedural novel can be even funnier if the police include Trolls and Dwarves and things like that. You start looking at the whole basis of the cop novel. You get the cop moving in a different way when you've actually set it in a fantasy city.

A good banana daiquiri is hard to come by. I've only ever found one place in this country that makes a proper one, and that's in Leeds.

If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book - not what they look like that's not very important - what people look like is not about their character. You have to describe the shape they leave in the world, how they react to things, what effect they have on people and you do that by telling their story.