Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.
I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.
The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.
As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.
A named thing is a tamed thing.
If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.
People reveal so much of their mental processes online, simply because the psychological effect of anonymity just means that a whole raft of inhibitions are left alone when people log on.
The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.
Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.
Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored.
She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.
Guilleaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the corner of avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.
It isn't just a village. The houses aren't just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference.
I'm not fond of cities: the constant activity and swarms of people.
I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon.
Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station.
Drunkeness, she told us in a rare moment of confidence, is a sin against the fruit, the tree, the wine itself. Wine, distilled and nurtured from bud into fruit; it deserves reverance. Joy. Gentleness. (Page 194.)
For me, the magic of Hawaii comes from the stillness, the sea, the stars.
Places have their own characters. . . . But the people begin to look the same.
Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.
A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.
You seem to know a lot about it," she said. "And you do subtleties." "Yeah. Like I've always wanted to destroy the Nine Worlds while committing suicide." "Well, there's no need to be rude," protested Sif.
Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracle
My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.
I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.
You priests. You're all the same. You think fasting helps you think about God, when anyone who can cook would tell you that fasting just makes you think about food.
It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her.
Was it my fault that I got out of hand? --Loki
Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!
This isn't the first time the world has come to an end, and it won't be the last either.
You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.
A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online.
I am fascinated by how people eat and what it reveals about them.
Gods? Don't let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshippers. You don't even have to have powers anymore. In my time I've seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods - you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves. God is just a word. Like Fury. like demon, Just words people use for things they don't understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It's just as appropriate.
The process of giving is without limits.
Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know.
A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all.
Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.
I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia.
I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.
The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.
And so Nat stood up and joined the group, and followed, and watched, and awaited his chance as the light of Chaos lit the plain and gods and demons marched to war.
Anything that can be dreamed is true.
Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.
Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.
I'm not sure I believe in the whole 'ghost-afterlife' thing, but I think places are marked by people who have been there.
I'm incapable of hiding my feelings when I'm around someone I don't like.
Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.
Remember, it's the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings.
I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.
In any case, fire burns; that's its nature, and you can't expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor's house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?" Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. "So what you're saying is . . . I shouldn't play with fire," she said at last. Of course you should," said One-Eye gently. "But don't be surprised if the fire plays back.
One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.
Online communities are an expression of loneliness.
Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is
I'm insatiably curious.
Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Love not often, but forever.
The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.
If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.
Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.
A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.
What is a writer of fiction but a liar with a licence?
Change isn't always comfortable, but it is a fact of life.
I carried recipes in my head like maps.
That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time
I have a tendency to pick up my own challenges. The more difficult something it is, the more I want to try it.
I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.
I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.
I liked her better for showing a little spirit.
Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight.
Garden work clears the mind.
I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.
I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul.
Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.
A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.
A thing named is a thing tamed.
I think everybody has a secret life.
We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.
I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines
The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, Will I? Won’t I? in pitiful indecision.
I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.
I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm, of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist.
In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.
But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair." "I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?
All those moments, those memories. Everything that we are, compressed in just two or three kilos of paper — the weight of a human heart.
From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.
Library-denigrators, pay heed:suggesting that the Internet is a viable substitute for libraries is like saying porn could replace your wife.
I don't listen to music when I'm writing, but I often do when I'm reworking, editing or when I need to relax.
I speak as I must and cannot be silent.
Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.
I've never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow.
To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think...This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact.
I've nothing against kids reading anything they please, but I do have a problem with pink books for girls and black books for boys.
I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.
Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.
The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things.
...we do not simply get showered with Hollywood money because we happened to write a little story about wizards one day. It's not winning the lottery. It's a real job, which real people do, and they have the same real problems as other real people.
I'd rather be a freak than a clone.
If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.
I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.
The wind always brings us back to the same wall
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
Nat Parson says it's the devil's mark." "Nat Parson's a gobshite." Maddy was torn between a natural feeling of sacrilege and a deep admiration of anyone who dared call a parson 'gobshite.
