My cat mocks me frequently. It’s the universe’s way of keeping me from getting too big of an ego.

The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

Valerik spit to one side. “We laugh at religion’s brand of love, forms and rules that keep the poor feeding from the church’s coffers. It is in deed.” “I agree. That kind of love is...

Writing keeps me sane.

His smile is beautiful. It’s the kind of smile that can take away all nervousness and tension in a room, no matter how big. I have no choice but to smile back.

No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you’ve never found yourself in it?

We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don’t live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the...

Laughter comes from living.” I shrug, try to sound indifferent. “I’ve never really been alive before.

Sometimes when you get older — and I’m not talking about you, I’m talking generally, because everyone ages differently — things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe...

I decided to coin the term ‘cosy crime noir’ for Brighton Belle. That is ‘cosy crime’ for today’s sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.

Miniture protoplasm, the dirty little bastard!

The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

[…] there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion...

Again Gabe looked back at Michael, hoping he was about to step in, but all he did was give him a nod. A nod? Really? I don’t need a nod. I need someone to stop...

You don’t turn your back on your destiny.

She was waiting, but she didn’t know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

You know when I told you the joke about how a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body? I was only kidding.

It was one of those late summer days trying its best to convince everyone that winter would never seep through and ravage the earth.

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best...

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that’s appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.

Perfect love, like perfect partner does not exist. We create our own perfect love. If you care to know, a a good partner is like a construction engineer. To build the kind of house he...

Reading takes the reader to faraway lands, new cultures, new and exciting adventures; you meet new friends and enemies; it takes the reader from the heights of the imagination to the depths of human emotions;...

Not everyone can be rich,’ Peter went on. ‘Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave! If we tell ourselves we can do it; if...

Dead. Supposedly Suicide. That’s how they’ll kill Michael too. Make it look like a suicide or an accident of some sort.

It’s only artists who know how to use their eyes

She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.

Only fiction has the power to cross the mental barricades, to make strangers intelligible to each other, because it moves people’s hearts as well as engaging their minds.

Raven?’Yes?’What do you believe in?’I believe in – finding out!

Live in your dreams, not your past.

Woe is the mind of the common man, so easily controlled by the prospect of an ambition never to be truly attained. This is what tyrants live on and by what commoners are blissfully burdened...

… Shannon’s fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself, Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool.

Growing up, Renaldo and his father had a great relationship. At least until his father went and slept with someone else.

I feel ill,” [Howl] announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.

They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the...

The Temptations of St. Anthony,” by Donald Barthelme

My love grows long, and my smile is wide. My gaze is deep, and my penchant for making up words is apopleggio.

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely. “What?” Alex asked. “This cannot be.” “What can’t be?” Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time. “I have been reading people all...

Please don’t forget me, don’t let me fade away… I was here, I lived, and I loved…

It’s okay to dress up like another person, but never try to be someone else. Just try to be yourself, because that’s what makes you special. Oh, and watch out if a dragon ever starts...

A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the...

Life is something that no one can teach you,You have to learn it.

What’s broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as...

I started to drink heavily, comfortably caught in the tentacle-like clutches of alcohol.

At my age, every day that I overcome simple inertia is a victory.

at least they wouldn’t be our same old problems… ” (22)

Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their...

Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?

The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children’s books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she’d been a little girl....