Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

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.

Thoughts -- just mere thoughts -- are as powerful as electric batteries -- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.

Any real record person knows that the number one most powerful marketing tool when it comes to music is repetition.

Thinking about the suffering of those you hold dear can reduce you to tears; in fact, you could spend the whole day crying.

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.

Expect the best and people will rise to the occasion.

Education, or enrichment, is a dynamic, evolving, lifelong process. Every time you look, sensitively with awareness, your vision grows.

If the land of make believe is inside your heart it will never leave.

But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.

Art is a perfectly complete cause.

There's nobody quite as mean as people being mean for Jesus.