Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions.

There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

Youth is after all just a moment but it is the moment the spark that you always carry in your heart.

I feel like Im able to relate to all races of people because when you learn to tap into the raw emotion of a person, that goes past color.

Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.

A good bookshop is not just about selling books from shelves, but reaching out into the world and making a difference.

The lover's pleasure is in the pleasure of the beloved. The lover is satisfied when the beloved is fed. The lover is vain when the beloved is adorned.

I'm pretty healthy, most of the time.

There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.

When a person gets right with God, my eyes are upward...I'm poor in spirit. I'm spiritually bankrupt.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there's something wrong with my act.

I want to go to there.