Quotes from Tim Pratt

Stories are really important to people and can really change the way they understand, and even live, their lives. As such, I don't agree much with people who say, 'Calm down, it's just a story.'

Life is full of borders. Some of them, once crossed, can never be crossed again in the other direction. But there are new countries to discover across every one.

As I got older, I had more experience with borders. Some literal - living in the dramatically blue misty mountains on the line between North Carolina and Tennessee, and living in California - home to expats, transplants, and refugees from both sides of innumerable borders.

I almost drowned in a hot tub at a writing workshop once after I had some drinks without accounting for how the high elevation would impact my tolerance.

I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though.

Fictional realms are usually terrible places to vacation, as they tend to be full of monsters and conflicts - Narnia and Middle-earth would both be good places to get killed - but I wouldn't mind visiting the worlds of Iain M. Banks's 'Culture.' You'd just have a hard time getting me to leave.

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

Family lore says I was named after the song 'Timothy' by The Buoys, a lovely little ditty about three guys who get trapped in a cave-in and resort to cannibalism; they eat Timothy.

Once, my writing-avoidance behavior involved me mixing up a cleaning concoction and getting some ancient stains out of the carpet. My wife liked that one.

When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

I didn't grow up on any sort of border; more in the middle of nowhere, in rural eastern North Carolina.

All water has been everywhere, Bekah. What flows from your faucet was once frozen inside a glacier, and squeezed by unimaginable pressures at the bottom of the deepest sea, and rippling in a lightless lake in a cavern no living thing has ever touched. Also, it has almost certainly been inside a dinosaur. All water is one water, and all water remembers the past.

Sure, movies can be a way to hide from life, but shit, sometimes you NEED to hide from life, to see a better life on the screen, to know life can be better than it is, or to see a worse life and realize how good you have it. Movies taught me not to settle for less.

The loss of memory is the loss of identity, Rebekah. If you can't remember who you are, you are at risk of becoming someone else.

After several stops, and a dark journey through the tunnel under the bay, B stood up and said, "This is it." They stepped off the train and took an escalator up a level, into a domed area, and then exited the train station. As always when Marla emerged from an underground space into the light, she felt a sense of new possibilities, as if she'd returned from the underworld and brought back secrets. There was power even in symbolic journeys.

I like plans. They create a comforting illusion of sanity and order.

Puns are the E. coli of humor,

If we manage to cheat death, we'll give death another sporting chance.

You know that saying about how fools rush in where wise men fear to tread? Ashok rushes in where fools won't even go.

we went over to one of my favorite pizza places for a few slices of deep-dish, which Trey appallingly did not appreciate: "This isn't pizza. This is basically lasagna with no noodles.

If there is one thing I've learned from the years in the criminal enterprises, it's that anyone can do almost anything to anybody else for any reason, and villainy and treachery doesn't have a thing to do with race, sex, species, or creed.

Everything is somebody's fetish.