You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

What characters do must grow out of who they are, and who they are is, in turn, influenced by what you make happen to them.

Religious reverence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff.

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

Technology is Darwinian. It spreads. It evolves. It adapts. The most dangerous wipes out the less fit.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.