A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.
The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.
You see with your eyes. This means you can be misled by charm, by outward appearance. By webs of glamour, by surface pretences. I do not see with my eyes. I see good and I see evil. Nothing else.
Use your blog to connect. Use it as you. Don’t ‘network’ or ‘promote.’ Just talk.
If you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.
I hope that this year, you make mistakes. If you do, then it means you have tried, learned, lived, pushed yourself, changed you and your world, and most importantly, you’ve done something.
I think there should be an Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% of the people have 99.99999% of the Time.
Libraries really are the gates to the future.
I’ve learned over the years that everything is more or less the same amount of work, so you may as well set your sights high and try and do something really cool.
There are stories you build and there are stories you construct; then there are the stories that you hack out of rock removing all the things that are not the story.
If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do.
You don’t get heaven or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman.
Freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent.
From meetings and partings none can ever escape. Nor from magic.
You mourn, for it is proper to mourn. But your grief serves you; you do not become a slave to grief. You bid the dead farewell, and you continue.
Read the books you love, tell people about authors you like, and don’t worry about it.
I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.
The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.
One word after another. That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it. So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.
We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world.