Mary Lee Settle quotes:

Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.

When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

Recorded history is wrong. It's wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.

[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.