“I don't differentiate in the way that the genre creators want differentiation to be made. I feel that I have never written children's or YA stories particularly.” WayWantFeelsChildrenMadeStoriesWrittenCreatorGenreDifferentiateDifferentiation Author:Robin McKinley
“When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.” IfsKnowsWritingFirstsMayDoeBookIdeasStoriesAbleWaterWhiteNovelWrittenTheoryFaultsBrilliantCouncilTubesOnce Upon A TimeRaftingWhite Water Author:Robin McKinley
“The story is always better than your ability to write it.” WritingStoriesAbilityRejection Author:Robin McKinley
“It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.” IfsNeedsFirstsBookMatterStoriesReadingCasesGoneFourMaterialsMonthsSixPagesBagsSix MonthsEccentricity Author:Robin McKinley
“People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.” PeopleWayStoriesWantedRememberForgetOughtBoundariesBlur Book:Spindle's End Source: Spindle's End
“The story is always better than your ability to write it. My belief about this is that if you ever get to the point that you think you've done a story justice, you're in the wrong business.” IfsThinkingWritingDoneStoriesBeliefJusticeAbility Author:Robin McKinley
“One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper.” FactsStoriesMovingWonderfulBecomingPaperObstaclesManageFascinatingBiggest Obstacles Author:Robin McKinley
