I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle.

There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.

I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

I'm always trolling for trivia.

During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions.

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre.

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life.

I wanted to see if the American man in plain brown pants and a bare torso could speak profound things.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

I can loop my tongue into multiple rolls.

Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.

If you want to do things, do things.

A lot of people come work with me because I keep an open set, and people can visit. Julia Roberts used to have friends visit on 'Pretty Woman.'

Getting angry doesn’t solve anything.

The point in me playing with Prince was to let a lot of people know that I can play trap. I don't think people know that.

I needed to give back, give back, give back. I felt guilty about my success. I felt uncomfortable about how easily I had been delivered this extraordinary life that I had.

I tried never to take anything for granted.

I do retweet some of the things that people say about the things I've done, but I don't necessarily want to use it to promote myself because I find that it gets kind of boring. There should just be a whole different site for that. Because it's just kind of boring and gross to use it just self-promotion.

I get really frustrated during a crisis when I go through all the cable channels and find - very often with the exception of CNN - that I'm not watching news at all. You think, 'Well, God... there are talk shows, talk shows, talk shows and everyone is an expert!'

Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening.

We had the boy's name picked out, but we didn't have a girl's. When he turned out to be a boy, we were so relieved. Literally, in the middle of contracting and pushing, and with my wife being drugged - out and half - lucid, we were still coming up with names.

You know, I'm playing the Mirage in Vegas, the main room... About 5 percent of all comics end up as the main headliner on the Vegas Strip, so that's a big deal for me. Getting to do my stand-up the way I have this summer is really what I've dreamed of since I was about 10 years old.

I love New York, but I have to admit that I feel very English, and I do miss that sense of history that you have everywhere in Britain.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.