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"I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author."
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"You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else."

"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle."

"Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers."

"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

"Be able to read blueprints, diagrams, floorplans, and other diagrams used in the construction process."

"I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second."

"Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life."

"Books were everywhere, lined neatly on shelves that went from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was two stories high, with an upper balcony that provided access to a second-floor gallery. The dazzling array of red, gold, green, and brown bindings was a feast for the eyes, while the wonderful smells of vellum, parchment, and pungent leather almost caused Amanda to salivate. An exquisite waft of tea leaves lingered in the air. For anyone who enjoyed the pursuit of reading, this place surely was paradise."
Explore more quotes by Sarah Zettel

"So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians."

"Fortunately, many people also enjoy a stand-alone as a sample of something new, like trying the special at a favourite restaurant one night instead of going for the usual."

"I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character."

"My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl."

"Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt."

"If I get blocked, it is generally because I don't know enough about some aspect of the story or the characters. The answer for this is generally more research, or making more background notes, so the place and person can be more fully realized inside my own mind."

"When I was in college, I spent a summer working in London. I'd enjoyed tea before that, but then I got actual, really good tea there and never looked back."

"I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research."

"I did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus."
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