“Fiction is very, very important," he said, his voice is rising. "Storytelling is how people learn. You get people to understand new cultures and other lives through stories. Made-up stories. Fiction.”

“I think that storytelling and creation are very close to what the center of what magic is about. I think not just for me, but for most of the cultures that have had a concept of magic, then the manipulation of language, and words, and thus of stories and fictions, has been very close to the center of it all.”

“Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there.It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds.”

“They would sit and talk and tell us their hard luck story. Whether it was true or not, we never questioned it. It’s very important you learn people as people are.”

“Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.”

“Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other.”