I came up with a parallel Venice called Venus. set in a parallel Venice about 1701.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that is cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.

Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

No one is ever ordinary.

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

Daniel 12:3 "...and those who turn the many to righteousness will shine the stars forever.

Standing alone, walking my own path. Rearranging my thoughts. Pushing worries away. Climbing out of the fog, towards freedom of mind.

Body and mind like man and wife do not always agree to die together.

The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.

For more than forty years, the United States Congress has shamelessly used payroll taxes intended for Social Security to fund big government spending.

I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type.

Apparently the new high-tech Star Wars toys will be in stores any day now. The toys can talk and are interactive, so they can be easily distinguished from Star Wars fans.

We waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into potions which, after all, do not immortalize, but only intoxicate.

I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.

We need to create incentives for our ranchers and farmers to manage their lands to maximize carbon sequestration.