The Ultimate Warrior Quotes

What I like about writing a stand alone novel is you're starting with a fresh world and fresh characters. Part of what I love about writing is that journey of discovery where it's all new to me as well.

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.

If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in. I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death. I did fiddle with lots of maps for 'Glass Sword,' as the second installment sees Mare, Cal and company traveling throughout their country, and that's always fun for me.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

The thing I love about being a novelist is that with each project, you invent a new world. You approach it with a different set of aesthetic and structural ideas, and you grapple with a different series of problems in figuring out how to tell the story. And yet there are certain concerns that stay constant.

I just don't see myself as a travel writer. I can't. I don't.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

There's nothing more fun to me than new characters and a new world.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.