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.

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.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

I'm a creature of habit. I go to restaurants all the time and stuff.

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

Men even contract the dirty, filthy habit of chewing tobacco, and when the habit gets a good hold upon them they are never satisfied except when they have a wad of the stuff in their mouth. So with drinking. It is largely a habit.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.

Habit is a great deadener.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

Professors simply can't discuss a thing. Habit compels them to deliver a lecture.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

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.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

I applaud the American Cancer Society for all they do to eradicate smoking. Their local, state and national efforts help to discourage young people from taking up this deadly habit and the resources they provide have helped numerous smokers quit.