Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.

My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.

Kind? How boring that would be. I aspire to be wicked.

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.

If the novels are still being read in 50 years, no one is ever going to say: 'What's great about that sixth book is that he met his deadline!' It will be about how the whole thing stands up.

My biggest dream was to ruin the lives of my readers and crush their souls... And I really think that worked out pretty well for me.