“Just as all writers were beginners once, so were all novels. They all went through rough stages, even the ones by our most hallowed masters.”

“If you're going to mash two ideas, they need to fit some way. And preferable cause as much tension as harmony.”

“The truth: after just one novel, I had lost touch with my muse. The quietly desperate, jaded girl in my head had stopped slinging sardonic wit into my psyche.”

“Once she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!""What do you mean 'evil'?"Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people.""People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses.”

“The late John Gardner once said that there are only two plots in all of literature. You go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Since women, for many years, were denied the journey, they were left with only one plot in their lives --to await the stranger. Indeed, there is essentially no picaresque tradition among women novelists. While the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a change of tendency, women's literature from Austen to Woolf is by and large a literature about waiting, usually for love.”

“And it was to this city, whenever I went home, that I always knew I must return, for it was mistress of one's wildest hopes, protector of one's deepest privacies. It was half insane with its noise, violence, and decay, but it gave one the tender security of fulfillment. On winter afternoons, from my office, there were sunsets across Manhattan when the smog itself shimmered and glowed… Despite its difficulties, which become more obvious all the time, one was constantly put to the test by this city, which finally came down to its people; no other place in America had quite such people and they would not allow you to go stale; in the end they were its triumph and its reward.”

“If there was magic in this world, it happened within sight of the three bases and home plate. All the gems in my world that decorated the walls and floors of dragons' lairs, the sword hilts of privileged princes, and crowns worn by emperors and kings, were nothing compared to the beauty and splendor of the diamond in Wrigley Stadium. It wasn't just a yard with dirt, chalk lines, bases, and a small hill in its center. Wrigley was a field of dreams. Dreams of eternal glory for the men who ran to the outfield, who took their respective bases, and prepared for battle against those who would dare enter their hallowed realm. Dreams for the kids in the stands, all wanting to don a uniform, kiss their moms goodbye, and wield their bats as enchanted weapons destined to knock the cover off the ball. And for the adults who had already selected their lot in life, Wrigley made the dreams of past innocence, lost wonder, and the promise that there was something inherently good still left in the world, come true.Yeah, corny as hell. But all true.”