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

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.

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.

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.

A sturdy hold, but I think there's something up with the material.

If freedom rings, then bondage bombs.

A good officer learned to take care of the feet of his men first, and from there their stomachs and hearts. By that means, he could motivate their souls.

Hope roves in a future of fame and wealth.

I can look at a chick who's a little out of shape and if she turns me on, I won't hesitate to date her. If she's a good f**k she can weigh 150 pounds, I don't care.

Leave my image alone... I will behave as I think I should and I will not change anything.

In this tour around the world I was not interested in contemporary buildings because I had seen contemporary buildings actually until they came out of my ears in a sense.

For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?

I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.

Like Patience gazing on kings' graves, and smiling Extremity out of act.