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

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'm really grateful to my parents for having the confidence in me to let me go. I was terrified I might have to slink back to the village with my tail between my legs, and treated every job as though it were my last - I still do - but fortunately, I got work and things seemed to slot into place.

The way I heard about The American Giving Awards was from the people that I work with. My publicist and I had a conversation a while back about wanting to really get involved more and more. We've been working with the National Council for Adoption with the children's home that I was adopted from called Holston Home.

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

Congress has greatly tightened the loopholes terrorists can use to harm Americans. We need to do more. We need controls immediately on what forms of ID are adequate to board planes and enter secure sites.

I think I'm a character actress at heart, and I think my work is character work for the most part. I'm not the lead of any films - which is not to say that I wouldn't ever want to be; it is just to say that hasn't been my path.

People usually are the happiest at home.

I believe in karma, and I believe if you put out positive vibes to everybody, that's all you're going to get back.

Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'

I think we can work through a lot of these issues.

It's a very complex network of genes making products which go into the nucleus and turn on other genes. And, in fact, you find a continuing network of processes going on in a very complex way by which genes are subject to these continual adjustments, as you might say - the computer programmer deciding which genes ultimately will work.

It is no longer acceptable to ignore the suffering, and designers must take responsibility for the way that their fur is produced.

Sometimes getting what you want means letting go of what you have.

Global challenges require collective responses.

To be 49 years old now and still be called The Kid, that's kind of special.

E-Verify is a very commonsense reform that we can implement here in the state of Florida. I think I share a lot of Floridians' frustration that it didn't pass and a lot of the politics that were taking place behind the scenes.

I'm death obsessed. You know, I have death all over my house. I have a stuffed two headed sheep!

When I was 4, my dad let me 'help' him back out of the driveway, but I'm amazing at driving golf carts.

I wasn't the kind of kid who would get A's without even trying. I had to work to get good grades, but I was very organised about it because I always wanted to do well at everything I did. I'm very competitive.

I just play the little guy, except I play him through dance.

Prince Felipe is the best ambassador for Spain: I have already told Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, minister of foreign affairs, that the prince should travel to the U.S. more often.