“People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.”

“Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.”

“I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.”

“I don't know any more than you what the future will hold. But my point of view is different. You see despair and I see cause for hope. I read the future in a way that is more agreeable than you do.”

“Believe what you like, but don't believeyou read without questioning it.”

“When people asked what I wanted to be, I'd tell them a writer. They were surprised or indifferent. If people don't read, what is a writer?”

“Don't tell me how to write my novel. Don't tell me you've got a better ending for it. I have no time for that.”

“Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.”

“If we can't write diversity into sci-fi, then what's the point? You don't create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.”

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”