JACQUELINE CAREY

When I started really writing fantasy, one of the things I noticed was a real absence of sexuality in the genre at all. And it's such a profound part of the human experience that it's a really big thing to leave out.

I have always loved fantasy; I think probably stepping through the wardrobe with Lucy in C.S. Lewis's 'Narnia Chronicles' was my first exposure when I was really little.

Clearly, I'm drawn to characters with inner conflicts.

I don't really consider my work, on the whole, 'fringe' in my own mind; science fiction and fantasy have been pretty solidly in the mainstream for a while.

Having a literary agent makes a huge difference in submitting work. My agent has access and tremendous passion.

It's funny, because in deference to conventional wisdom, I spent my struggling writer years trying to suppress my naturally baroque literary voice and write clean, spare prose. I finally gave up and embraced my baroque tendencies when I wrote the Kushiel series.

I started a novel in the back of a notebook, and it was great because it looked like I was taking notes. And I just, I kept it up, it was sort of fantasy, it was part soap opera. It was utterly dreadful, but that's how I got hooked.

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love. It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss. Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.

It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

I can see patterns in events, and behaviors; in mathematics, I follow slower

A little truth seasons a lie like salt.

Oh love and hate are two sides of the same blade

There are those who hold that there is a pattern to all that is said and done in this world, that no thing happens without reason nor out of time. As to that, I cannot speak, for I have seen too many threads cut short to believe it, but of a surety, I have seen too the weft of my fate shuttled on the loom. If there is a pattern, I do not think there is anyone among us who can stand at a great enough distance to discern it; yet I will not say that it is not so.

Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.

Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel.

Some chains are forged for us - those are the hardest to bear.

It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one's own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.

The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart

Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?

It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others

Genius requires an audience.

There's more to clothing than just adornment. It does more than merely change how the world perceives us. It changes how we perceive ourselves.

It's the same questions we ask of our existence, and the answer is always the same. The mystery lies not in the question nor the answer, but in the asking and answering themselves, over and over again, and the end is engendered in the beginning.

Only insofar as you enjoy being sorry, my dear, which, while it is a considerable amount, occurs only after the fact, thus making it a singularly ineffective deterrent, yes?