Quotes from Holly Lisle

Actions have consequences... first rule of life. And the second rule is this - you are the only one responsible for your own actions.

If you don't accept responsibility for your own actions then you are forever chained to a position of defense.

This is writing. You cut out chunks of your own memories, rework them, bleed into them, breathe into the raw clay, and hope the creature lives.

The story I'm writing finds its own voice while I'm writing it.

Anything designed to be inoffensive isn't worth your time -- life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death.

If you have dreams you want to pursue, the time is now. There is no perfect time, and there is no better time. There is only the time you lose while you're making excuses.

Actions have consequences...first rule of life. And the second rule is this - you are the only one responsible for your own actions.

The only place you will be accepted is the place you make for yourself.

You must learn to face the fact, always, that you choose to do what you do, and that everything you do affects not only you but others.

Adventures are only interesting once you've lived to see the end of them. Before that, they are nothing but fear, and being too cold or too hot or too wet or too hungry, and getting hurt.

I have never yet figured out what to do about good advice that you get, and that you know right away would help you, but that you cannot follow.

Guilt is a good friend, isn't it? It will stand at your back when every other friend has abandoned you, and in the face of all reason it will stay by your side, and even when you tell it, "I am moving on now," it will say, "I shall never leave you; never." If only I could find a lover as faithful as guilt.

I had come to discover that "safe" was an illusion, a pretense that adults wrapped around their children- and sometimes themselves- to make the world seem comfortable. I had discovered that under that thin cover of let's-pretend, monsters and nightmares lay, and that not all of them came from places like the moonroads or the nightling cities. Some of the monsters were people we knew. People we thought we could trust.

Anything designed to be inoffensive isn't worth your time -- life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death.

Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great... ...and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves. THAT is why you write fiction.

A voice speaks to each of us in the still silent places - a voice that tells us to stand, to have courage, to do what is right.

How did you do it?" he wanted to know. "Enchanted arrows? Spell of exploding flesh? Rain of fire? No, not that. The worm would be cooked and we would be eating it. Wand of destruction? Oh, a wand of destruction would be a find, fine thing." He turned to me. "Speak up, girl." I hit him with your skillet. A lot.

If you have dreams you want to pursue, the time is now. There is no perfect time, and there is no better time. There is only the time you lose while you're making excuses.

Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy.

And let's debunk one bit of writer myth while we're here: Doing a seventeenth revision on a project does not make a writer an artist or move him above the writer hoi polloi any more than dressing entirely in black or wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or big, black drover coats. These are all affectations, and smack of dilettantism. Real writers, and real artists, finish books and move on to the next project.

May we see our paths clearly, may we follow them truly, and may the roads we walk always bring us back together safely from wherever we have wandered, to wherever we dare call home.

Race doesn't exist. Skin color exists. Hair and eye color are real. Body type varies from individual to individual, as does tooth shape and color, the form of fingernails, and the amount and texture of body hair. But 'race' is a phantom conjured up by people no different from each other than purebred Cocker spaniels are. Race is a lie, and the people who conjure by it, no matter their color or their politics, are liars.

I would rather be right and die than be wrong and kill.

Dan had begun working his way around the room starting at the food wall. "Here's a little wheel to twist" he said, and an instant later, "Genna, it has water in it. Good sweet water. And when you twist the wheel, it stops and starts." And a moment later, "A little room with a privy! But" echoing noises. "Oh," he said, sounding elated, "when you press a handle, water wahses the inside of the privy. You should see this!