Connie Willis
Connie Willis
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis, commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major awards than any other writer—most recently the year's "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear. She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 December 1945
CountryUnited States of America
I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty.
My latest comedy, Bellwether, let me go after everything that bugs me: meetings, Barbie, trendy coffeehouses, those incompetent clerks who refuse to get off the phone to talk to you, and bread pudding.
When you've written your characters into a corner, you just hand the manuscript over to your partner and make her fix it.
I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).
I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.
And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.
Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.
To do something for someone or something you loved-England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history-wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.
You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-
When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.
Perhaps that's how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.
TO ALL THE ambulance drivers firewatchers air-raid wardens nurses canteen workers airplane spotters rescue workers mathematicians vicars vergers shopgirls chorus girls librarians debutantes spinsters fishermen retired sailors servants evacuees Shakespearean actors and mystery novelists WHO WON THE WAR.
He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door--to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?--would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn't possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too--in a place he didn't belong, serving in a war in which he hadn't enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance?
I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.