“The sorcery is not confined to the story; it's matched by the magic of Austin's literary craftsmanship.--Leland Dirks, author of Angelo’s Journey”

“The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.”

“[I]n adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult readers who do deal in straightforward stories find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects literary craftsmanship. But stories are vital. Stories never fail us, because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. [Contemporary writers, however,] take up their stories as with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do.”

“A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.”

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

“I would not employ an author to referee a Ping-Pong match. By their very nature they are biased and bloody-minded. Better put a fox in a henhouse than to ask an author to judge his peers. (in a letter to the Governor General about the GA's Literary Awards & his issue--among others--with the judging system, 1981)”