I don't think people need to know much about me to understand the book, or to enjoy it. The book stands by itself. Over the last several years, my life has been all about writing these books, but the books aren't about my life.

Elodin looked at me. "What a remarkably honest threat," he said. "Normally they're much more growlish and gristly than that." "Gristly?" I asked, emphasizing the 't.' "Don't you mean grisly?" "Both," he said. "Usually there's a lot of, 'I'll break your knees. I'll break your neck.'" He shrugged. "Makes me think of gristle, like when you're boning a chicken.

I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.

Each book needs a good beginning and a good ending. People get pissed off when you don't close things off properly at the end.

Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.

No hard feelings about that time in the Crucible when you mixed my salts and I was nearly blind for a day. No. No, really, drink up!

You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen.