There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.

I also find the desert a wonderful metaphor for desolation and yet the exact counterpart of the ocean with its hidden depths. Both are vast, harsh, implacable, homogenous to the untrained eye, and beautiful. Bothallow the wind to roam on the surface. And both serve as wonderful vehicles for human survival stories.

When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.

Fantasy is not the literature of subversion of the status quo but of 'awakening to' the status quo.

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.

A related recurring theme is the exploration of how we take for granted the things in our immediate environment that are common and ordinary. Existential blindness, of sorts.

Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.