The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.

There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.

It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you.

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

It's always good to hear that people you like are happy.

Unless you're writing for a humorous effect, elves or space aliens and all creatures who aren't human should at least be as strange as, oh, the French.

Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations.

They turned their desks into a trigonometric war room, poring over equations scrawling ideas on blackboards, evaluating their work, erasing it, starting over.

For twelve school years, every morning, she had turned left out the front door to get to work. Now the taxi turned right, spiriting her off in the opposite direction.

The real Jihad is an internal process, not an external one.

Jerks aren't heartbreakers there just fools with good taste.

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

The center of every man's existence is a dream.

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.

Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out.

Nobody is as smart as everybody.

A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.