Quotes from Rick Yancey

I always feel trepidation at the beginning of every project. I worry about so many things. Time to get it right, the skill to do it justice, the will to finish. I also worry about more mundane things, like what if my computer crashes and I've forgotten to back up the manuscript?

When civilizations collide, it usually isn't the more primitive one that prevails.

Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you.

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction.

I didn't show up here to give your life purpose now that your life's over. That's up to you to figure out.

I don't care what the stars say about how small we are. One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters.

Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.

It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.

One lesson I learned from 'The Monstrumologist' was never to get too attached to your own characters. That's harder in practice than in theory. At the end of the third book - which coincided with the end of my contract - I was an emotional wreck. I mourned Will Henry and Warthrop.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

It isn't that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It's that the truth is too hideous to face.

There's an old saying about truth setting you free. Don't buy it. Sometimes the truth slams the cell door shut and throws a thousand bolts.

Our enemy is fear. Blinding, reason-killing fear. Fear consumes the truth and poisons all the evidence, leading us to false assumptions and irrational conclusions.

My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first 'Alfred Kropp' book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish - until I changed my protagonist from a thirty-something P.I. into a 15-year-old kid. After that, it was off to the races, and I am so glad.

My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.

Nothing is more painful than the loneliness of being with someone who is never completely there.

My nose is broken, " I said. Damn that Dumbo. Made me self-conscious."My ankle's broken, " he said."Then I'll come to you.

'Tax Collector' was optioned for a series with F/X, but it never happened. I guess they ran into a problem trying to figure out why someone would tune in to watch a show about a guy who works for the IRS.

The harder survival becomes, the more you want to pull together. And the more you want to pull together, the harder survival becomes.

Human beings are remarkably resilient. When you think about it, our species has been teetering upon the edge of the existential cliff since Hiroshima. In short, we endure.

I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point.

The way we learn to write is the way we learn to talk: We listen to others and start mimicking speech, and that's how we come to become speakers. Writers you admire, you admire the way they plot, you admire the way they create a character, you admire the way they put a sentence together, those are the writers you should be reading.

Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well.

I've always wanted to write science fiction. It was one of my first loves, and I knew if I became a writer someday I'd probably write something in the science fiction vein, but I hesitated for a long while because it's such well-trod ground.