There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.

Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.

It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you.

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

It's always good to hear that people you like are happy.

Unless you're writing for a humorous effect, elves or space aliens and all creatures who aren't human should at least be as strange as, oh, the French.

Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations.

They turned their desks into a trigonometric war room, poring over equations scrawling ideas on blackboards, evaluating their work, erasing it, starting over.

For twelve school years, every morning, she had turned left out the front door to get to work. Now the taxi turned right, spiriting her off in the opposite direction.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean--""To speak of it?" asked the K'mir. Diane nodded. "You have to, just to bleed off the poison from the memory.

He'd believed it. She couldn't believe that he believed it. Sometimes, she hated him for that.

Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.

The hardness of a diamond is part of its usefulness, but its true value is in the light that shines through it.

My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

If you reach deeply into yourself, you are reaching into the very essence of mankind.

Be truthful... and pay attention. I would also recommend the avoidance of credit cards.

I really don’t think you should put your hand inside the manticore, dear. You don’t know where it’s been.” –Enid Healy

Technologically we now have four [seven!] billion billionaires on board Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune.