Tanith Lee

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.

I also love Disney, and will defend doing so, because there's so much in those films and I don't care if it's stereotyped.

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.