“Cloaks are nice. You can wear a cloak and have nothing on under it at all. And you can go anywhere you want like that!”

“Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.”

“Sometimes he tries to catch her, wading frantically through earth that has turned to water, or sometimes through air. Sometimes she tries to catch him. They never catch each other, no matter what.”

“She raised her sad blue eyes to mine. "It's going to be so boring here without you. And I'm going to have to deal with Grandmother on my own! You need to e-mail, text, call, send smoke signals--whatever--and tell me everything you're doing."I laughed. "Yes, I know. Every day. I promise.”

“You sell off the kingdom piece by piece and trade it for a horse that will take you anywhere.”

“Every walk of life falls under the Testicular Imperative: Either you have the world by them, or it has you.”

“Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”