Teresa Nielsen Hayden Quotes & Sayings

Don't use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Or they may take them figuratively - but if so, they'll also take your magics and transformations figuratively. Either way, you're in trouble. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

So many problems are solved simply by knowing enough verbs. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

If this power could be used for good, it wouldn't be this power. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I believe God put that itchy spot on our backs just exactly where we can't reach it in order to encourage us be nice to each other. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Just because you're on their side doesn't mean they're on your side. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Didn't need the user icon to know you're white and male. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I have to go make books. Sorry about that. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Plot is a literary convention. Story is a force of nature. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

If there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it's civil society that goes away, not force. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The advent of the internet has made so many things possible. Self- published recreational journalism has always been around; but back when you had to at least learn to run a mimeograph, and you had to pay postage to distribute your deathless prose, people who didn't actually have much to say for themselves found other hobbies — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Writers say many true things about their own experiences with publicity and promotion. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Sometimes writers say true things about the overall nature of publicity, promotion, and the publishing industry; but alas, not always. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

There's a rule for what makes good fantasy work, and it's as strange as any riddle ever posed in a fairy tale: In fantasy, you can do anything; and therefore, the one thing you must not do is 'just anything.' Why? Because in a story where anything can happen and anything can be true, nothing matters. You have no reason to care what happens. It's all arbitrary, and arbitrary isn't interesting. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

If you ask 20 different readers why they read, they will all be right. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Writer: It's not an occupation; it's a compulsion. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden