There was nothing wrong with being a homebody. There was nothing wrong with not wanting -- not needing -- the constant jostle and noise of a party or bar or... whatever.

There are as many stories to be told as there are people to tell them about; only the mean-spirited would consider there to be a competition at all.

Magic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.

Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into this world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they're not treating them as possessions or toys.

Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are.

When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten.

The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.

One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.

You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.

You don't have to be Michelangelo to teach basic art, just as you don't have to be Shakespeare to be able to teach the correct use of language.

Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?

Music's the soundtrack of my life and has been since I was a teenager. There's always music. If I'm not playing it, I'm listening to it. With my writing... sometimes it inspires a story, sometimes it highlights something I'm working on, sometimes it simply helps me stay in the narrative mood.

It was all cheese and applause.

To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.

Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.

We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?

I'm not...' Angharad began, but then she thought. Not what? Not a bad person? Perhaps. But had she never known anger? Never held unkind thoughts? The stranger's observation was valid. No one was innocent of darkness.

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music.