For the moment, its called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, — Daniel Abraham

"I was listening to Tim Powers talking and he said he didnt want his villains just defeated, he wanted them humiliated and destroyed. And I thought: I dont. I want my villains to be understood and forgiven."

"Writers are a basically insecure bunch. We are convinced that everything we do sucks, all the time. Its something you have to fight. The best way to make sure that your writing will never be particularly good is to use it for something besides telling the story. And I think theres a real tension between sophistication and accessibility."

"I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed. And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)"

"I dont find fantasy to be more or less suited to philosophical questions than any other genre, really. I think that the soul of fantasy—or second-world fantasy at least—is our problematic relationship with nostalgia. The impulse to return to a golden age seems to be pretty close to the bone, at least in western cultures, and I wouldnt be at all surprised if its a human universal. For me, its tied up with the experience of aging and the impulse to recapture youth. Epic fantasy, I think, takes its power from that. We create golden eras and either celebrate them or—more often—mourn their loss."

"It’s always been like this. Every generation finds its own way to show that it isn’t like the one before. Too much risk, too much sex, terrible music, not enough respect for the old ways. This is no different."