American Quotes

It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

I'm always trolling for trivia.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

Grown men do not need leaders.

Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.