A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.

A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.

That's such a thrill - a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house.

I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage.

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.

I think the Internet, particularly the availability of information, is great. I do a lot of correspondence on-line and have a chat line to talk to my fans as well.

I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.

Make no judgements where you have no compassion.

I wouldn't encourage new writers to start off publishing through electronic media... it still isn't wide enough for the readership they would need to get a good start.

Because we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there.

Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims.

I'm 78, I'm on my pension in Ireland, and all that good stuff.

At age 77, I need the help of someone with more energy than I can now summon to finish a book.

But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.

Writing has been so much a part of my life that I'm really quite annoyed that I can't do as much as I used to.

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.

I have written my own screen version of Pern, but had no buyers yet.

I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens.

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write.

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.

I didn't raise Todd to be a writer, but he happened to be one anyway.

I'm very fond of the Talent series, and also the Crystal Singer trio.

I pastor a very large church in western Australia. We have about - over 2,000 people, which we have a Bible school, community services, a lot of things linked with it. So my life's very full today. Not enough days in the week.

I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.

I can't comprehend that I'm in the film of 'Les Miserables.' It's one of those dreams I thought would be unattainable for someone like me, who came from nowhere.

A carbon nanotube is just a graphene sheet that's rolled up seamlessly, and this happens in nature; carbon nanotubes are found in mineral deposits around the planet.

There is a long tradition in China for writers and journalists to take pen names, partly as protection from retaliation by authorities. If Facebook requires the use of real names, that could potentially put Chinese citizens in danger.

Howard Hughes was able to afford the luxury of madness, like a man who not only thinks he is Napoleon but hires an army to prove it.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.

If I stay in academia, I might end up going someplace random.

I think my dad's post-presidency, he didn't miss a beat. He didn't get into any kind of 'Woe is me.' He dusted himself off and led an incredible life since 1993.

I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.

Allah does not withhold to withhold. Remaking the heart was the objective. To remake it, He sometimes breaks it first.

There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside the field of teaching understand how bad most of our elementary school materials still are.

What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.

It's hard because there's a part of me that wants 'True Detective' to win every award we're nominated for. But I'm a huge fan of 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones.'

Don't cry over the past, it's gone . Don't stress about the future, it hasn't arrived. Live in the present and make it beautiful.

I am interested in all things that celebrate and enhance the female form.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you're young, you can't play enough.

Unfortunately, New Mexico depends significantly on federal dollars. We have four military bases here in New Mexico. We have two national labs that are very important to our national defense.