My brand of fantasy is completely devoid of the traditional notions of magic as ritual. Instead I see the fantastic as a meta-layer of existence beyond the real world.

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.

When reviewing my novel Dreams of the Compass Rose for the Magazine of F&SF, master fantasist Charles de Lint called it "engaging and resonant, creating a new mythology that feels so right one might be forgiven for thinking that it's the cultural heritage of some forgotten country or people that have been lost to history." This of course I take as the highest compliment, since it was indeed my sincere intent.

The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.

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.

I see no profound progress taking place when there is no hope, no inspiration, only drastic overthrow and rebellion. Before having a revolution of thought there must be real ideals to aspire to, and they are only to be found within.

I relished the sweet sense of keeping a unique secret in my mind - a wonderful magical universe that I could go to any time, any place, and no one had to know. It was my personal place, better than any I've read about in any other book. And when I wrote, I was in the process of pulling that personal universe out of nothing and into the cold reality of the greater world.