The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.

Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.

If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options. You can climb it and cross to the other side. You can go around it. You can dig under it. You can fly over it. You can blow it up. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there. You can turn around and go back the way you came. Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.

I think fantasy literature is the one true literature of hope and imagination.

Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.

Short stories are like individual jewel stones on a necklace, wonderful in themselves like standalone gleaming entities of semantic intensity.

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.