I hate it when something I've had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I've written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.

When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes.

What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?

No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.

In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.

I hate it when something I've had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I've written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.

I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do Harry Potter or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didnt write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.