Quotes from Marie Brennan

I chose my pen name when I was ten, because I knew even then that my legal name would be more trouble than it was worth.

When I'm working on a novel, I generally do write every day, but in between those marathons, I take breaks. My brain needs time to recharge.

I'd love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn't the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom.

I think if you write for long enough, you eventually have a problem with everything, because you start figuring out where you could be doing better. But as far back as I can trace, I always wrote clear, grammatical prose.

I'm a writer; as soon as I imagine what would happen if I found the fountain of youth, it turns into a dystopia in my head.

At one point in the 'Onyx Court' series, I think during 'In Ashes Lie', I suggested that Lune might come to love someone else eventually. Which was me pushing back against the narrative trope that people only get one True Love in their entire lives - an idea I think is kind of pernicious - but in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done it there.

The truth is that real history was a lot more complicated than our popular understandings lead us to believe.

My mood depends heavily on what happens to me right after I get up.

I've only written two novels, neither of them published, where the book is dominated by a male point of view; in the 'Onyx Court' series, it's split roughly 50/50.

I read a lot of the 'Pern books' growing up - basically up through 'All the Weyrs of Pern,' maybe a couple after that. As far as formative dragon influences are concerned, she's probably one of the top ones; I know I read other fantasy novels that had them, but none particularly stick in mind.

I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history.

There was a brief period of time when I was very young where I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian - largely because I liked cats - but then somebody told me I would have to cut animals open, and that was the end of that.

I didn't really distinguish between genre and not-genre as a kid, until I made the transition to adult fantasy via Terry Brooks.

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.

Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in.

I sometimes imagine there is a clerk behind a desk situated between the brain and the mouth. It is his job to examine utterances on their way out, and stamp them with approval or send them back for reconsideration. If such a clerk exists, mine must be very harried and overworked; and on occasion he puts his head down on the desk in despair, letting things pass without so much as a second glance.

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience.

Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plenitude of mud.

Nudity, I find, rapidly becomes boring when it is not treated as scandalous.

But coming to terms with one's sorrow is one thing; sharing it with strangers is quite another.

I have never attempted to hide that I have had two husbands in my life. I have, however, neglected to mention that in between them, I had a wife.

If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment.

There is no faster way to harden my determination than to assume I will fail at something.

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.