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

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.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.

I was never really a writer, I was always more of a performer.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

You know, Mamet is not a huge writer of female parts. Most of his movies don't even have women in them, so I'm lucky I'm in it at all.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.