Patricia C. Wrede Quotes

Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.

I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.

This is the most important lesson you must learn about magic," Miss Ochiba went on. "There are many ways of seeing. Each has an element of truth, but none is the whole truth. If you limit yourselves to one way of seeing, one truth, you will limit your power. You will also place limits on the kinds of spells you can cast, as well as their strength. To be a good magician, you must see in many ways. You must be flexible. You must be willing to learn from different sources. And you must always remember that the truths you see are incomplete.

Humility is as good for the soul as it is for the memory

I’d much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something

How can you know it's the best, if you don't learn about anything else?

Nine times out of ten, talking is a way of avoiding doing things.

In short, if we wish to see anything sensible done about the situation, we will clearly have to do it ourselves.

No proper princess would come out looking for dragons," Woraug objected. "Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubillee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!

Then they gave me a loaf of bread and told me to walk through the forest and give some to anyone who asked. I did exactly what they told me, and the second beggar-woman was a fairy in disguise, but instead of saying that whenever I spoke, diamonds and roses would drop from my mouth, she said that since I was so kind, I would never have any problems with my teeth.” “Really? Did it work?” “Well, I haven’t had a toothache since I met her.” “I’d much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something

Sometimes I couldn't help thinking that the unluckiest thing about being the thirteenth child was having all those older brothers and sisters telling me what to do.

May you and your triple cursed wash water turn purple with orange spots and fall down a bottomless pit!

He wasn't a medical doctor, just educated all the way up as far as you can get.

In a lot of ways I was a generation ahead of my generation; I had a working mother wheneveryone else’s mother was staying at home.

No matter how good you are at sneaking, you can't ever sneak well enough so that mosquitoes won't find you, and no matter how worried and tense you are, or how hard you are trying to pay attention, you just can't help noticing when a cloud of mosquitoes comes for you like you're their first good meal since last fall.

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down."

Of course it doesn't make sense." Lady Wendall said. "The rules of society rarely do.

Rennie didn't quite dare to answer back, but she looked a whole book and a couple of extra chapters.

Well, of all the bacon-brained, sapskulled, squirish, buffle-headed nodcocks!

Mendanbar took a deep breath. You could stay here. At the castle, I mean. With me. This wasn't coming out at all the way he had wanted it to, but it was too late to stop now. He hurried on, As Queen of the Enchanted Forest, if you think you would like that. I would.

He pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave me a sidelong look, the one that meant he was so sure you were wrong that he could just wait and let you find out for yourself the hard way.

She who laughs last may not invariably laugh best, but she does laugh.

If you want to build a car, you don't slap a bunch of iron ore, some sand, a rubber tree, and a couple of cows together and call it good

I see you've decided to take my advice after all, Richard." Lady Wendall's amused voice said from somewhere above and behind him. "Marrying your ward is *exactly* the sort of usual scandal I had in mind: I wonder it didn't occur to me before.

It took us most of the morning to put together the letter she sent to the Frontier Management Department, and I learned a lot about how to be frigidly polite and still leave somebody feeling like they'd been spanked.