Harry Turtledove Quotes

...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.

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.

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.

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

Holy Jesus God, it's the Gerps shootin' us up!" the manager shouted. He hadn't known whether to say Germans or Japs, and came out with both at once.

He gathered enthusiasm when he thought of the goal, and not the means by which he had accomplished it.