The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

Spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance.

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers. Given all the changes, both economic and technological, SF hasn't done too badly.

If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.

The universe is full of dead people who lived by assumption.

Stay hopeful.

She looked so beautiful, with every smile of hers, I was falling for her. She had the perfect set of teeth for the perfect face to make up that perfect smile.

The tiniest of actions is always better than the boldest of intentions,

Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.

He tried to read, but the words swam in front of his eyes in meaningless waves. He put on the television. Nick at Nite, the cultural equivalent of aerosol cheese.

They think my life is glamourous. It's not true. I obviously get to come in and do radio interviews. That's the glamour. But other than that, I eat and sleep and that's it. Eat, sleep and do shows.

A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith.

[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis.

All this world is but a play... be thou the joyful player.

I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.