I didn't do anything as active as deciding that I wanted to be a writer. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was the final authority on whether or no….

Well, I don't ever leave out details, in that I don't come up with information or description which I don't then use. I only ever come up with what s….

Becka was almost good looking enough to be on a reality dating show, but not funny looking or sad enough to be on one of the makeover shows..

You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's….

There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at firs….

I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (cof….

A monster. You and your friends, all of you. Pretty monsters. It's a stage all girls go through. If you're lucky you get through it without doing any….

No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they've tried, they've only made matters worse. No wizard ever stopped a war or mended a fenc….

The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you..

Most of the things that I remember from childhood wouldn't make a particularly good story: rescuing worms during rainstorms, our schnauzer attacking ….

I think that we want to be led slightly astray when we're being told a story. Just a little wrong footed..

I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones….

Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl..

In terms of style, too, I think I've been working with a somewhat limited -- although intentionally limited -- set of tools. So I'm attempting to be ….

Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes..

I don't abandon stories once I've started working on them. Once I sit down and start a story, I'll be damned if I'm going to give up on it. But I do ….

You say that if we hadn't just gotten married, you would want to marry Miss Arkansas. Even if she can't spell. She can sit on her hair. A lover could….

When I'm up for an award, there are usually two or three other things on the ballot that I like better than my own fiction..

The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method..

Our eyes are always blind when they view the future..

I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of ….