Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Right now my favorite thing is working to recall our absolute shitbag of a governor. He's been screwing up my state for more than a year. I want him out.
I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.
The good thing about working on the books for 14 years before they hit the shelves is that I worked out most of the kinks long before they were published.
I decided to dub the room with the good chairs my lutery. Or perhaps my performatory. I would need a while to come up with something suitably pretentious.
Generally my favorite remarks always come from my readers. I've had people say my books made them laugh, or cry, or that it frightened them late at night.
I’d heard you were dead.” "I heard you wear a red lace corset,” I said matter-of-factly. “But I don’t believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.
I'm just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I'm the sort of person who worries about the difference between "slim" and "slender."
He taught only one class: 'Unlikely Maths'. But since the time was listed as "now" and the place, "everywhere," this was hardly helpful in tracking him down.
I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.
Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.
My mom once lost track of me at the zoo and when she found me I was lecturing a man about the difference between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I was about 3 1/2.
Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.
“I will admit, I've never had a student offer himself up for a vicious beating in order to prove he's worth my time.” “This was nothing... Once I jumped off a roof.”
Humor is important. If you're going to tell any sort of realistic story, you're going to have to have humor in it, because people are funny. Clever people especially.
It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
I was heavily influenced by my first attempt at a novel. I started a fantasy novel back in high school, and... well... it really sucked. It was a plotless, clichéd mess.
I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.
Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.
Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.
My only real daydreamy casting over the years has been Natalie Portman for Denna. She's an amazing actress, and Denna is going to be one of the hardest characters to pull off.
Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry.
Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give is the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.
Is there a connection between language and magic? Yes. Ten times yes. So much yes that it almost doesn't bear talking about. It's as pointless that arguing that the sun is hot.
I know better than to read reviews but I do it anyway. Somebody described my pacing as 'glacial.' I wasn't thrilled, but I think they meant it in a not entirely unflattering way.
Why are you smiling?' 'I'm relieved,' I said honestly. 'I was worried I'd given myself cadmium poisoning, or I had some mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.
I'm not implying that fantasy is for kids. I'm saying that more and more people are finally realizing that there's more to fantasy stories than elves and wizards and goblin armies.
I want to learn how to pick locks, swordfight, throw pottery - it's all research. It's like the curious person's version of James Bond's license to kill. I've got a license to learn.
But even this piece of flattery couldn't distract me from the fact that I was in the center of the Fae realm, blind, stark naked, and without the slightest idea of what was going on.
There is something powerfully beguiling about the excited eyes of a young woman. They can pull all manner of nonsense out of a foolish young man, and I was no exception to this rule.
The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.
After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.
Simmon pushed his hair out of his eyes, laughing boyishly. "You can't argue your way out of this one! She's obviously stupid for you. And you're just plain stupid, so it's a great match.
It's my opinion that if you're trying to tell a realistic story that centers around realistic characters, you can't help but touch on important issues. Those issues are what make us human.
My thought is, if you're a book lover, you're going to enjoy winning a book even if it's not something you'd ordinarily pick up on your own. It's a chance to expand your horizons a little.
It's hard to be wrongfully accused, but it's worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.
With his eyes and those hands there won't be a woman safe in all the world when he starts hunting after the ladies.' 'Courting, dear,' my father corrected gently. 'Semantics,' she shrugged.
I know," she said. "You have a stone in your heart, and some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done. But you don't have to be alone for it. You should have come to me. I understand.
If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.
It is quite a thing. There are so many men, all endlessly trying to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me lest I fall.
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
I spoke it soft, but close enough to brush against her lips. I spoke it quiet, but near enough so that the sound of it went twining through her hair. I spoke it hard and firm and dark and sweet.
It's one thing to not want an evil-sorcerer type villain in your story, but it's another thing to avoid having any sort of antagonist at all. A story without an antagonist gets weird pretty quick.
We need time to relax and enjoy ourselves too, no matter how dark the story. The occasional humorous moment helps with that. That's one of the things that Joss Whedon excels at in his storytelling.
I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.
But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.
I'm kind of balanced between excited about the potential of the project, and the knowledge that I shouldn't get my hopes up. I like to be practical, and the truth is, these deals fall apart all the time.
There is nothing I can't do writing in Fantasy. I can have romance, I can have mystery, I can have drama, I can have good characters - I can have everything you can do in any other genre... plus a dragon.
I'm not a stereotypical professor type. I don't smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I'm more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.
Now that I understand how publishing schedules work, I can understand why many authors have the sophomore slump. A year is a long time to wait for a sequel, but it's a short, short time to WRITE a sequel.
85% of modern music doesn't have a damn thing to do with music. It has to do with looking good. Name me one woman on the top ten right now who isn't absolutely smoking hot. You think that's a coincidence?