In Lords of Rainbow I start out by taking away color from the world, and in the process show color's vital place in our lives. At least I hope that by the end of the book it's a portion of what the reader comes away with - a sense of how much color perception enriches our lives and how its lack can make our sensory experience incomplete.

If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.

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.

In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either.

Don't let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.

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

Fantasy plunders the well of our deepest selves for existent truth instead of creating new truths out of the illusory fabric of recent events or the flow of society.