What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept.
It is less fun to talk about what I am feeling rather than what I am thinking. Saying 'I feel awesome' isn't really interesting or enquiring.
Any description of a person that comes from the outside is very hard to deal with. People don't like being summarised. It's nice to receive a compliment, but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.
I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.
In researching 'The Luminaries,' I did read quite a lot of 20th-century crime. My favourites out of that were James M. Cain, Dassiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith.
What I wanted to create with 'The Luminaries' is a book that had structural patterns built in that didn't matter, but if you cared about them, you could look into the book and see them.
When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'
Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.
When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn't.
Part of the elasticity that you need, in order to continue to try to create, is the foregone conclusion that not all of it is going to be fabulously successful. But it's all going to be part of a long lifetime body of experimentation.
You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.
Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing...
The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere.
"You want more?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "Even after what we did?" His mouth took on a sardonic twist. "I'm afraid quantity usually matters for me . . ." --THE PRINCESS'S ASSASSINS
Silverstream: You idiot!!! What are you doing in my territory??? Graystripe:...Drowning? Silverstream: Can't you do that in your own territory? Graystripe: Ah, but who would rescue me there?
I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.
It might be well enough to wander if you've a place and people to come back to, but I tell you now there's no desolation like wanting to go home and truly not knowing where it is.
What kind of hard SF do I write? Everything from near-future, Earth-centric techno-thrillers to far-future, far-flung interstellar epics.
We need more foreign reach; no question about that. And we're working on getting that. We need more people abroad; we need some more bureaus. That is really an important job.
I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged 14,' which was unveiled in 1881, the Belle Epoque.
Transformation is something that obsesses me. What is the soul? Is there a difference between something like a soul and something like a self? Is our identity something we construct, or is it organic and natural? There are all kinds of theories.
