Encourage literally came from 'in courage.' The courage is put 'into' you from outside. Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves.

From the beginning, I did not intend to create a typical classic fantasy. I wanted an organic, harmonious world where my story could evolve. If this world needed gnomes, I put them in there. As for drevalyankas, pikshas, bolugs and other totally original creatures, they appeared there somehow by themselves in the course of events, and then just began 'to get under the feet of the main heroes'...

We become the books we read.

CENTER-OF-THE-UNIVERSE, that was me entering the workplace. And I woke up one day soon after that, struggling at the bottom of a vast ocean. But I needed that. Humbling experiences are part of growing - they help shape us and mold our character. Welcome to life.

Books... Are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me.

If one abandons their principles when tested by struggle, they were never true principles but advertisements for character they never possessed.

Fateful encounters with a cruel world reveal our character. No human is immune from heartbreaking loss. Regardless of our socioeconomic status, eventually everybody shall suffer a grievous personal loss, a body blow that inflicts pain of inexpressible magnitude.

With every passing day, we add a page to our personal story, an illustrative script that casts our character shaped by an implacable external environment and fashioned by our supple state of inwardness.

It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life “I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder.