Wouldn't you like to have an augmented memory chip that you could plug into your head so you don't have to look everything up and remember everything?

I always had this non-stop drive. I had to keep sending stories out and every once in awhile I'd get something accepted or get the little trickle of positive feedback.

Each book will have a lot of cliffhangers, because I like that.

A moment of consideration often prevents a thousand apologies

Every spare second I would write, somehow. On my lunch hour, too.

Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it.

If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people.

The real key is time management and being able to focus on what you need to, on using every available minute to accomplish something that needs to be done.

One of the things that was kind of shocking for humans... was to come to terms with was the fact that, hey, we may not be the center of the universe.

There is grand romance in The Lord of the Rings. It's an important part of epic literature.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

A star never lets anything dull its sparkle, not even darkness.

You got a lot but you just waste all yourself. They'll forget your name soon and won't nobody be to blame but yourself.

Don't wait for anyone to deputize you or authorize you or empower you. You have to just start out with yourself...and put one foot in front of the other.

If you don't say the honest thing, it never becomes true.

I've done everything I want to do and gone everywhere I want to go.

I wish in my own mind I were more definite - that I was absolutely convinced I'd never direct someone else's script, but I keep reading scripts, because I might find something.

Take care not to begin anything of which you may repent.

The night before the Nobel announcement every year, I've gone to bed feeling quite anxious. I was optimistic, and also I knew it might never happen.