And let’s debunk one bit of writer myth while we’re here: Doing a seventeenth revision on a project does not make a writer an artist or move him above the writer hoi polloi any more than dressing entirely in black or wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or big, black drover coats. These are all affectations, and smack of dilettantism. Real writers, and real artists, finish books and move on to the next project.

Which would be at about shoulder height. Apparently, in Pada’s search for her path, the Saints needed to be sure that they had nothing important to say that lay toward either the ceiling or the floor, or she would render them mute.

I had come to discover that “safe” was an illusion, a pretense that adults wrapped around their children- and sometimes themselves- to make the world seem comfortable. I had discovered that under that thin cover of let’s-pretend, monsters and nightmares lay, and that not all of them came from places like the moonroads or the nightling cities. Some of the monsters were people we knew. People we thought we could trust.

The definition of a writing career, is write a book, write another book, write another book.

A voice speaks to each of us in the still silent places – a voice that tells us to stand, to have courage, to do what is right.

If you have dreams you want to pursue, the time is now. There is no perfect time, and there is no better time. There is only the time you lose while you’re making excuses.

Anything designed to be inoffensive isn’t worth your time – life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death.

Adventures are only interesting once you’ve lived to see the end of them. Before that, they are nothing but fear, and being too cold or too hot or too wet or too hungry, and getting hurt.

If you don’t accept responsibility for your own actions then you are forever chained to a position of defense.

Courage is nothing more than taking one step more than you think you can.