You can write better about a place you've seen for yourself. You don't have to have been there - I've sure written about places I've never seen - but it does help.

...Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?" "I hope there's gray...Black and white make things easier, but only if you don't want to think.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

A horsefly can't do a horse much real damage, but it can drive it wild anyhow.

Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

I learned by reading an awful lot and by writing a half a million words of stuff nobody would do anything with except wrap old fish.

I'm a social caterpillar. I am not a social butterfly

I do first draft in longhand, which saves a lot of rewriting. I try to get a certain amount done each day. Don't always, but I try. Then I clean up in the rewrites.

People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.

You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.

People were as they were, not not as he wished them to be.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

To love the creations of the Earth is to worship the Being who created them.

Even though I had a good income from my lectures, no one would give me a loan. The insanity almost drove me to sympathize with the feminist movement.

I always try to do something for my husband that's completely selfless, and something that I hope will rock his world in some form or fashion.

I have no use for people who hunt for what they call sport

One of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what I'm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.

She sleeps alone at last.

And it's hard at the end of the day

We spend our lives searching for something we think we don't have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it.

Stop selling. Start helping.