I must admit that I do have a particular soft spot for the character of the chameleon-trickster goddess Ris in Dreams of the Compass Rose. Ris has gone through the whole spectrum of personal change and has had the longest road of all. And in the end she chooses to come back to the world, to guide, and to help, and to open the eyes of those who are suffering. In that is her true strength and humorous wisdom. I really do like her a whole lot.

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.

Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder. Another is Deity. The choice to be a fool is yours.

I would say it was [ifluence] all the Greeks and the Russian classics like [Lev] Tolstoy, [Andrey] Goncharov,[Fedor] Dostoyevsky, [Alexander] Pushkin, and the international classics in Russian translation like Victor Hugo, George Sand, Charlotte Bronte, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain.

Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.

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

Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it.