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

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 dense when it comes to discouragement.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.

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.

That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.

I leave behind this hurricane of f***ing lies

Live a colourful life. If you can't, develop your own Photoshop and colour it!

...the heart is a muscle like any other. Tearing it down is the only way to make it stronger.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

All the lessons you learn in film school from the people you hate are always the ones that are important. The lessons you think are great and thankful for never end up meaning anything to you.

The judges say, make it your own, so I just remixed a song if I felt like the piece needed it

People around you should really have nothin' to say. Me, I'm just proud of the fact that you've done it your way.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It's very psychically wearing not to write - I mean if you're supposed to be writing.

You’re young and you have all your life ahead of you.

Stick Boy liked Match Girl, He liked her a lot. He liked her cute figure, he thought she was hot. But could a flame ever burn for a match and a stick? It did quite literally; he burned up quick.