“Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, come...” — Nancy Kress Quote

“Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.”

“Exposition has legitimate uses. It's the most efficient way to summarize background information, including necessary information about a character's history. It can set the stage well for a major dramatized event.”

“Rituals are the building blocks of life, my way of cobbling an entire summer together from incidental wisps.”

“I love standing up behind the blocks, and I love that moment just before you dive in and it goes quiet, and you take a deep breath and you just dive, and then you try and win, but that moment just before I go, that's why I race.”

“Human settlements are like living organisms. They must grow, and they will change. But we can decide on the nature of that growth - on the quality and the character of it - and where it ought to go. We don't have to scatter the building blocks of our civic life all over the countryside, destroying our towns and ruining farmland.”