Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.

What are the thorns really telling her? It’s why she won’t let us see them, why she clings to them–or they cling to her–as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she...

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.

A librarian had found the baby sitting abandoned on the sheer edge of the world; the librarians kept her. That proved shrewd. Nepenthe had drooled on words, talked at them, and tried to eat them...

If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to...

I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I...

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

That’s the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.

Sorry, he said penitently. It’s a book. I have no common sense around them.

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of...

Shall I add a man to my collection?

Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombria’s past. Parts of the city’s past lay within time’s reach, beneath the streets in great old limestone tunnels: the hovels and mansions and...

But you must stop playing among his ghosts — it’s stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He’s trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out...

She had begun to bake to have her eyes looking at a bowl, a flour bin, an oven, a fire, a face, anything but water. Her hands shaped loaves like scallop shells, like moon shells,...

The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond’s mind, and all the while their eyes said other things....

The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it’s one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn’t really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder...

I don’t teach lies, but I do not teach all I know is true.

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries....

Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.”Be thankful,’ Gavin advised with a...