You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience.

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn— that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale. (Introduction to Ender's Game)

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

The novelty and freshness you'll bring to the field won't come from the new ideas you think up. Truly new ideas are rare, and usually turn out to be variations on old themes anyway. No, your freshness will come from the way you think, from the person you are; it will inevitably show up in your writing, provided you don't mask it with heavy-handed formulas or clichés.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.