Q: Why do I love thee, O Night? A: Because you know I will never answer.

Why does every road eventually narrow into a point at the horizon? Because that's where the point lies.

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.

The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.

I've always been creative verbally, had a flair, my teachers said - wrote great expository essays in elementary school, scribbled little poems, embraced all writing assignments. And all along I read voraciously - first in Russian and then, after we left the USSR, in English, and even Spanish.

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.

In the desert, the only god is a well.