Hope...which is whispered from Pandora's box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, un...
The first rule of world-building is available physics, which basically means that if you want it to feel real, it has to follow the same rules as this world, from gravity to how human behaviour works. If you have a fantasy element that doesn't obey t...
I believe art prefers rules. For some artists, the worst thing you can do is say 'Do whatever you want.' Such permission can be terrifying. I know it is for me. Often it's better if you impose rules or restrictions on a project. Requirements can forc...
Prince is my favorite ever. I've liked Prince since... It's been a really long time. Even in junior high. I used to only like punk for a while, and I had all these rules for what kinds of groups were cool, and who was not cool, but as soon as I saw t...
Horror fiction seems to spawn more dumbass 'rules' than any other kind of writing, and one of the dumbest is the assumed 'requirement' of a twist ending, going all the way back to H.H. Munro. This story is also the result of a long rumination on how ...
A story is a story is a story. The only difference is in the techniques you bring to bear. There are always limitations on what you can and can't do. But I enjoy that. Just like when you write a sonnet or haiku, there are rules you have to abide by. ...
If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of polished pros...
The day you give priority to bogus ethics over human reactions, you become a loser. Human reactions are priceless. Rules should never, ever stifle emotions. Tennis is a very human game facing a great danger that it will be strangulated in a cat's cra...
I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, ...
To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better.
I like breaking the rules.
A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels ...
Sick of lame ducks, use Cosmic Ordering and your ducks will lay golden eggs.
Brahma and Airavata Long ago in lands of golden sand Brahma turned to Saraswati and gently kissed her inked hand....
A solitary finger of light fell upon it, illuminating motes of golden dust floating in the air.
Strange, how being left out of a secret always feels like a betrayal of trust.
He always thinks because I'm reading, I'm not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.
Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.
It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.
It got to the point in the late 70s and early 80s that I was spending so much money buying golden age comics that I could only justify it if I got work in the media.
When we bemoan the lost golden age of music, it's worth remembering that mainstream radio listeners of the '60s and '70s, particularly in Canada, missed out on an outpouring of brilliant R&B music.
