Quotes from Kameron Hurley

I want to write books that keep people up at night, where they cry through the first forty pages and keep reading anyway.

Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.

When we see sexist and racist behavior, the only way to change that is also to point it out and make it clear that it's not okay.

I think that there's this idea - especially for male readers, but female readers as well, because we're all indoctrinated, right? - where there's this idea that if a woman is tough, it can only be in a way that is still sexy.

I started writing books because I couldn't find the books I wanted to read on the shelf.

We don't fall in love with perfect people. We fall in love with complex ones.

What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things I made up in my head so other people could see them.

Being a writer, writing for a living, is one long persistence game. Everyone wants you to quit. Quite often, you want to quit. You get kicked down. You come up swinging. You keep going. Either you are committed to it, or you aren't.

I want to be constantly in awe of the possibilities of the universe.

If your entire conception of what's possible in fantasy only comes from other fantasy books, you're going to go on to create a copy of a copy of a copy. There's nothing original there, nothing dynamic. Which is fine if that's your goal, but I've always wanted to do something no one else was doing before.

People interest me a lot: why we are kind, why we are cruel, how we learn the difference, what makes us act in ways contrary to those we've been socialized with.

Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife.

Authors are often sent a number of books to read for possible review and advance praise. It can be easy for new books to get lost in the pile.

Authors make stuff up. Let's not pretend it's any more magical than that.

I tried to be really nice and like the things other people liked and do the things other people were supposed to do, and what you find out is that they're going to bully you anyway. And I thought, 'You know what? If I'm going to get bullied anyway, I might as well get bullied for making a difference in the world.'

I enjoy challenging myself in new and different ways.

There are no failed ideas, just ideas that haven't found their moment yet.

Your enemies love your failures, sure. But what they love even more is to see you brought so low by those failures that you never get up again. Sometimes enemies aren't even external. Often, our biggest critic, our greatest enemy, is ourselves.

Many people don't even want to start something until they feel fairly confident that they will be a success at it. But me? I love to throw myself into things headfirst and fail all over the place.

I know a lot of writers who tell me they 'always' knew how to read. They can't remember a time before reading. And those writers make me want to tear my hair out.

Watching the progression and backlash against feminism even since 1970 will give you a serious case of whiplash.

I'm terribly particular about what I read: lush writing, secondary world or seriously far-out science fiction, strong worldbuilding, dynamic characters. I need to have it all for it to work for me.

I'm incredibly pleased to be working with Marco Palmieri and Tor Books on 'The Geek Feminist Revolution.' This was an exciting book to pitch and is proving to be a lot of fun to put together.

I write for free online out of love, passion, and often, rage.