Desire is like fog on a bathroom mirror -- its presence incites you to wipe the mirror, and see yourself clearly again.

And it is a quiet terrible thing, too, to discover the value of love this way [after loss] - when the object of love is no longer there, when love dies or goes away or changes. When it is too late.

I am a novelist at heart.

I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.

What we need in fantasy is the sudden balm of clarity - a temporary reprieve from life's white noise and clamor of pain, a kind of time-out. Such clarity, a new perspective, is made possible by fantastic metaphor.

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies. Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night. The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again. When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart. It is your immortal inspiration.

Here is where I like to burst in as a writer, to take one strong sensory detail or image and instead of enhancing it or directing attention to it by shouting about it, I simply take it away.