No Book Or Poem Is Ever Finished,

There Are Many Other Writers Whose Work I Admire Tremendously, But None Whose Work Struck Me At Just The Right Young Age. Jack Vance Taught Me That Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Could Be Wonderfully And Liberatingly Stylistic. It Didn't Have To Be Pulp Stuff. He Really Changed My Writing And My View Of Science Fiction, So If Nothing Else, My Little Homage To Him In The Novelette I Wrote For That Anthology Is My Thank-you To Him. He Helped Me See That Any Genre Can Have Excellent Writing In It.

What, After All, Is More Real To Us Than The Geography Of Our Childhoods?

There Is A Fullness And Calmness There Which Can Come Only From Knowing Pain.

Words Bend Our Thinking To Infinite Paths Of Self-delusion, And The Fact That We Spend Most Of Our Mental Lives In Brain Mansions Built Of Words Means That We Lack The Objectivity Necessary To See The Terrible Distortion Of Reality Which Language Brings.

Nothing Helps An Artist's Career More Than A Little Death And Obscurity.