Scott Westerfeld

“Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.”

“When the term 'machine gun' enters common parlance, the word 'machine' becomes much more sinister.”

“I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.”

“Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.”

“I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.”

“It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.”

“At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.”

“And a special thanks for not burning up the whole ship. Including yourself, you daft bum-rag.”

“Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.”

“I spilled more times than a glass of milk on a roller coaster.”

“What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.”

“Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.”

“I have no problem with commenters stating strong opinions, except for my usual annoyance with people who don't agree with me.”

“Ninety percent of the research comes first. I mostly blunder around reading stuff and talking to smart people until an idea batters or oozes its way through to my narrative brain.”