“Operating by trial and error mostly, we've evolved a tacitly agreed upon list of the elements that make for a good fantasy. The first decision the aspiring fantasist must make is theological. King Arthur and Charlemagne were Christians. Siegfried and Sigurd the Volsung were pagans. My personal view is that pagans write better stories. When a writer is having fun, it shows, and pagans have more fun than Christians. Let's scrape Horace's Dulche et utile off the plate before we even start the banquet. We're writing for fun, not to provide moral instruction. I had much more fun with the Belgariad/Malloreon than you did, because I know where all the jokes are.All right, then, for item number one, I chose paganism. (Note that Papa Tolkien, a devout Anglo-Catholic, took the same route.)”

“Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth.”

“Could you penetrate this palace, Prince Kheldar?" King Anheg challenged."I already have, your Majesty," Silk said modestly, "a dozen times or more."Anheg looked at Rhodar with one raised eyebrow.Rhodar coughed slightly. "It was some time ago, Anheg. Nothing serious. I was just curious about something, that's all.""All you had to do was ask," Anheg said in a slightly injured tone."I didn't want to bother you," Rhodar said with a shrug. "Besides, it's more fun to do it the other way.”

“Humanism is not science, but religion - the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe is was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance, but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles, with no overall meaning. Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence. That is why among the ancient pagans it was unknown.”

“I'm hungry, Garion, and I don't think well when I'm hungry.""That might explain a lot," Beldin noted blandly. "We should have fed you more often when you were younger." "You can be terribly offensive sometimes, do you know that?""Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

“Treasured Pagan Deities were misrepresented and distorted by the Christians for political and religious gain. Dressing their own Satan, who has remained one of the most opressive symbols of evil in our time, in the horned antlers of Cernunnos, a revered Celtic God, was one of the more recognizable ways Christians robbed Pagans of their way of life.”

“I write my stories for my children, the best fan club a writer could ever have. They keep me writing and make it fun.”