"For the moment, it's called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, that'll swap out for a better name. There are some things in the proposal that need to get smoothed out so that everyone's on board, but I think it'll happen. It's a very different from the Long Price books. It looks and feels more like traditional epic fantasy -- quasi-Europe, ferinstance, and some dragons in the background, no 15-year gaps between books -- but the plot structure is packed with everything I think is cool. There are echoes I'm intentionally building in of from things as familiar as Firefly and The Count of Monte Cristo and as obscure as Tevis' Queen's Gambit and Reck-Malleczewen's Diary of a Man in Despair. And the magic system is all about faith and deception, which will be tricky and fun both. What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16."

"I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed. And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)"

"I don't find fantasy to be more or less suited to philosophical questions than any other genre, really. I think that the soul of fantasy—or second-world fantasy at least—is our problematic relationship with nostalgia. The impulse to return to a golden age seems to be pretty close to the bone, at least in western cultures, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a human universal. For me, it's tied up with the experience of aging and the impulse to recapture youth. Epic fantasy, I think, takes its power from that. We create golden eras and either celebrate them or—more often—mourn their loss."

"Writers are a basically insecure bunch. We are convinced that everything we do sucks, all the time. It's something you have to fight. The best way to make sure that your writing will never be particularly good is to use it for something besides telling the story. And I think there's a real tension between sophistication and accessibility."

"I was listening to Tim Powers talking and he said he didn't want his villains just defeated, he wanted them humiliated and destroyed. And I thought: 'I don't. I want my villains to be understood and forgiven."

"He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know."

"Perhaps there had never been anything at all to see."

"“But, Corbet, there were things—between us—” “You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you.”"

"I didn’t know anymore what love meant, or why we were not all better off without it."

"Do you care for me at all? Or do you only need me?"

"She lies like the moon lies, a different face every night, all but one of them false, and the one true face as barren and hard as stone. Why do you believe her?"

"“Love is what we say it is,” she said fiercely. “That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows about it. I’m sorry.”"

"I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew."

"“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—” “You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly. “I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”"

"Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart."

"I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything. I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me."

"He was silent a moment, struggling. He said finally, “But you had a right to be angry.” “Yes. But not to hurt those I love, or myself.”"

"“The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day,” he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, “and he found it again at the bottom of his heart.”"

"Wisdom never learned silence, and it is most annoying when least wanted."

"The small red eyes regarded him, unblinking. “What would you give me for all the wisdom of the world?” “Nothing.” He turned back to his work. “I have heard you know the answers to every riddle save one. That will be the one I need answering.”"

"Men see what they are most afraid of."

"I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness."

"What concern of mine are your affairs? Or Coren’s? What kind of peace would there be in me or in my house if I took interest in the wars and feuds that you weave in the courts below? I do not understand such things. I understand only what lies within my walls."

"Still, all this time, I was only barely aware that my subconscious was putting together a layout of the house. It wasn't that I expected to need one, it's just how my mind works. I am, quite frankly, very good at it, and maybe that's where the real pleasure comes in — just the joy of doing something you do well. There are worse reasons for doing things; maybe there aren't any better ones."

"Stalin is the perfect example of what I was talking about. To simply call him corrupt tells us nothing useful. What circumstances put him into power? What objective pressures, as well as subjective characteristics, led him to make the decisions he made? I'm currently reading Trotsky's writings from 1932 (scary how accurately he predicts the way WWII would play out), and analyzing the details of why Stalin did as he did is far more complex and useful than just, 'power corrupts'. And it is even more true for the other great dictators of the 20th Century: I don’t think you can even say that Hitler and Mussolini were corrupt: they came to power in order to do the very things they did."

"A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be."

"Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you'd find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble."

"A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless."

"I will always hold to those principles by which I have been raised… To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity… To hold myself to higher standards of conduct than I hold another. To never strike without cause, and, when there is cause, to strike for the heart..."

"When there's nothing you can do except worry, that's a good time to worry."

"It isn't always easy to act on what's in your head instead of what's in your heart. And it isn't always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when it's okay to just follow your feelings."

"He checked, of course. Being sure and being willing to risk that surety against his future were not the same thing."

"And still, the more he learned, the more he became aware that he did not know."

"The painful truth is that while we might have the illusion, none of us are free."

"He is not bound so tightly by tradition that he will refuse a good idea simply for it being new, and not so wild that he would take a bad idea simply because it is new."

"That is the danger of an idea, Jerzy. Once planted, you cannot control where the roots may go."

"Everything else was in the past, and the past no longer mattered."

"Power calls to those who are hungry for power, and there are hungry idiots everywhere."

"Call it not paranoia, but caution."

"The Sin Washer had died centuries ago, and His legacy seemed often to be in the accumulation of connections and power more than the distribution of emotional or spiritual ease. She kept that thought to herself. Wisdom came in many forms, and silence was often the most useful."

"Talent alone is not enough. In the end, Guardian, it is desire that creates a master vintner, makes him into a Vineart. A passion, not for power, or strength, but for the grapes themselves. Anything else leads to ruin."

"Any change in routine was terrifying, even if it involved less violence rather than more."

"Disarm to farm."

"They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits."

"Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side."

"An untrampled scorpion troubles no one."

"Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power."

"Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?"

"Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind."

"She does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field."