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Elizabeth Hand Quotes

But talent—if you don't encourage it, if you don't train it, it dies. It might run wild for a little while, but it will never mean anything. Like a wild horse. If you don't tame it and teach it to run on track, to pace

But talent—if you don't encourage it, if you don't train it, it dies. It might run wild for a little while, but it will never mean anything. Like a wild horse. If you don't tame it and teach it to run on track, to pace itself and bear a rider, it doesn't matter how fast it is. It's useless.

Elizabeth Hand
Running, Horse, Mean

You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, something comes to live inside it.

Elizabeth Hand
Character, Shells, Ifs
Elizabeth Hand (2010). “Illyria”, p.52, Penguin

I went to college to study drama where I discovered I had no talent and after a period of dropping out majored in cultural anthropology which of course meant more masks and dancing. I studied what interested me and so I had to become a writer because my education had left me unsuited for a decent well-paying job.

Elizabeth Hand
Jobs, Drama, College
"Intense Ornate". Amazon.co.uk interview, 1999.

There is a love of wood, as of other things that do not answer to our touch.

Elizabeth Hand
Answers, Woods
Elizabeth Hand (1997). “Glimmering”

I wanted to have very strong female characters. I just thought it was always the way the world should be.

Elizabeth Hand
Strong, Character, World

I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.

Elizabeth Hand
Book, Thinking, Suspense Novels
On "Mortal Love" at HarperCollins, 2004.

Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don't always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that's one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.

Elizabeth Hand
Giving Up, Real, Reading
On "Mortal Love" at HarperCollins, 2004.

Endless longing; a face you'd known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you'd die for, and die of.

Elizabeth Hand
Childhood, Body, Faces
Elizabeth Hand (2010). “Illyria”, p.34, Penguin

It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

Elizabeth Hand
Ideas, Creepy, Sound
Elizabeth Hand (2013). “Generation Loss”, p.11, Hachette UK

The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.

Elizabeth Hand
Past, Our World, Notion
Interview with Cheryl Morgan, strangehorizons.com. November 29, 2004.

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