“Most everything influences my work. Working in a used bookstore. Going for walks in the woods and peering at mushrooms. Writing reviews. Coming from frumpy, grumpy, faded-at-the-knees Winnipeg.”

“... physical bookstores will become ever-nicer places to be. They are going to have more sofas, better lattes, nicer people working there. Good bookstores are the community centres of the 20th century.”

“If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken."[on Twitter, July 17, 2012]”

“Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.”

“Everything I have learned has not come from books, it has come experientially over time under pressure walking with Christ".~ R. Alan Woods [2012]”

“The Mushrooms. He rubbed himself with them and then whamo! Grumpy glows. He wouldn't come anywhere near this place without his mushroom rubdown, and let me tell you, that was disturbing to watch. The sounds he made, his face..." Leo shuddered. "He really needs to do that in private.”