If I'd been easily discouraged, I could have been a one-hit wonder.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Some people just don't seem to understand the concept of fiction. It is fiction; it ain't true, folks.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I started off like everyone else does, slogging but having a compulsion to put words on paper. I didn't write or read horror or fantasy, other than children's fantasy, until I was in my teens.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I went to Marion College for writing and I was kicked out of the writing school. I was asked to leave the writing program because I was corrupting the other students.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Nothing wrong with making money or doing what you need to do to sell, but I think it shows when you're writing something to pay the bills and when you're writing something because it's really your version of the world.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Now that I'm being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I'm unabashedly genre. It's what I like to read, what I like to write.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

For me the Anita series is built like a mystery series, which means that as much as possible each book stands alone, so you have a mystery to solve from the beginning to the end of the book.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

If people would write exactly what I wanted to read I wouldn't feel so compelled to write myself.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I've been writing stories since I was 12. 'Writer's Digest' was one of my writing teachers, actually.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I'm not terribly fond of soapboxes.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I wasn't like most girls.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I guess, what I'm saying is that when I've been this surprised by my own characters and world, all bets are off.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I am not a morning person.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.

- Laurell K. Hamilton

Readers respond to every genre intensely, if it's a genre that appeals to them. Again, who can say why anyone enjoys horror and dark fantasy? If I can't answer the question for myself, I wouldn't dream of trying to answer it for others.

- Laurell K. Hamilton