Quotes from Ann Leckie

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

Singing together is something human beings just do, and there are hundreds of years worth of just European vocal music available to read and hear.

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

When I was a kid, I had no perception whatever that science fiction was supposed to be a boys' club.

Working for several years as a waitress, you learn really quickly a couple of default scripts, so you know exactly what the interaction is going to be when the person sits down at the table.

When I need to get away from my desk, I tend to take walks or go places. I also like to bead - working with beads to make jewellery.

I've always enjoyed making up stories, especially when I was bored and just sitting around. It got really serious after the children came along.

I've been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun.

I suspect that we get used to particular sorts of stories being presented in particular sorts of ways, and we're so used to interpreting them and understanding what it is they're doing that we think of those forms and styles as faithful, complete depictions of reality.

'Ancillary Sword' picked up the Locus and the BSFA, which surprised the heck out of me.

The ability to live for five hundred years would be an incredible gift. But I greatly fear it would be a gift only for the wealthy - one that might greatly widen the gap between those with access and those without.

I read way, way more Andre Norton than could possibly have been healthy. It was a short hop from her to the rest of the library's science fictional and fantastic holdings.

I can't see potato chips being popular where there's not land to grow potatoes in or where frying in lots of oil isn't easy or convenient.

I'm not going to pretend that I never fantasized about winning the Hugo. Or the Nebula, for that matter. I just never thought it was an actual real possibility.

I don't really have guilty pleasures. I like what I like, and I don't worry too much about whether it's supposed to be cool or sophisticated or show that I have good or bad taste or whatever.

My taste in both is pretty eclectic. I do encourage people to try new and different kinds of tea if they can - there are so many different sorts, and so many, flavored or not, and there's bound to be something you like. The same with choral music, really.

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

I tend to edit some as I go - partly because one of the reasons I don't outline much is that I don't know what the next scene will be until I've actually written the previous scene.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written 'fanfic' - stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I've written is incredible.

The '70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot of women made their debut in that decade or really came to prominence.

I love science fiction, and one of the things I love about it is that it's so very different. You can read stuff that's just fast-paced adventure, and the characters are cardboard, but who cares, because they're heroes, and we love it. And you can read stuff that's really deep character, and everything in between.

I'm one of those people who always wanted to be a writer, so I have a fair amount of juvenilia, though fortunately, I was too old for my juvenilia to be on the Internet.