Anne McCaffrey

That's such a thrill - a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house. ”

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write. ”

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food. ”

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom. ”

I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage. ”

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible. ”

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form? ”

Writing has been so much a part of my life that I'm really quite annoyed that I can't do as much as I used to. ”

Because we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there. ”

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime. ”