Quotes from Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

I outline fairly extensively because I'm usually dealing with real events. I don't need to give myself as much information as I used to, but I still like to have two pages of outline for every projected 100 pages of manuscript.

When you're a mid-list writer, it pays to write fast.

If they aren't real enough to surprise me, then they aren't real enough to go on the page.

Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.

I'm not a good collaborator in general.

Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness.

Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing.

Common folk didn't have last names in the 8th and 9th centuries.

Art goes into the world unarmed, vulnerable to every quirk of fate, and it must survive only by its power to move men not to destroy it.

When it was cooler, Trazada made a simple meal of sausage, cheese, and bread. She had schooled herself to wait dinner until hunger urged her to eat; it gave seasoning to poor food that no spice could furnish. ("The Generalissimo's Butterfly")

Love is not for the weak, my heart. You must have courage.

You would think that with hunger and poverty and disease to do their part, mankind would not need to look for ways to die. But that's not the case. Hardly; hardly. There is always a new cruelty, a new war. And each time, they deal out death with an enthusiasm that staggers the mind.

There's no such thing as too much garlic.

There was a flamboyance, a theatricality about him: his dark hair was perfectly silvered at the temples and there was a Byronic grandeur in his demeanour.

That had always been the way of the world: Those with intelligence pressed into service by those serving the priests and generals unless the priests and generals were suspicious, at which time, those with well-trained intelligence had to flee for safety.

She was crossing the street to come to me when the car hit her. We planned a special date to celebrate our tenth anniversary. We left our eight-year-old daughter Samantha with a babysitter, snuck out in separate cars, parked the cars and walked toward each other on opposite sides of the street. We pretended we were meeting by mistake, as though we'd just glimpsed each other across the street and had to rush together.

How beautiful a thing is youth Which flees us in every way. Whoever desires to be merry, let him; For tomorrow is never certain. —Laurenzo de' Medici

The populace was mesmerized primarily because real life was suddenly as exciting as the movies. And all those famous faces! Big-name movie stars assuring the Committee they were four-square for the USA, and praising the Committee for the work they were doing, was a triumph for the Committee, and it went to their heads, eventually.

She stood in the doorway looking down at him. "Why'd you keep it?" He drew in a breath. "They were looking for a man with one arm. So I pinned this to my jacket. It's going bad-I can't use it much longer. He paused a moment, then finished, "I can't get any further without help.

Es extraño lo fácilmente que perdemos contacto con lo que nos rodea, y lo vital que puede llegar a ser ese contacto.

I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read.

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time.

Isn't that an odd philosophy for a vampire?