Jim C. Hines Quotes

Bullying is not okay. Period.

I see words, I read them.

There was magic, and there was magic. Thanks to Gutenberg, I could no longer pull wands, potions, and light sabers out of books, but when it came to research, give me a well-stocked library and I was a goddamned Merlin.

Some people would say it's a bad idea to bring a fire-spider into a public library. Those people would probably be right, but it was better than leaving him alone in the house for nine hours straight. The one time I tried, Smudge had expressed his displeasure by burning through the screen that covered his tank, burrowing into my laundry basket, and setting two weeks' worth of clothes ablaze.

A zombie amusement park sounds like fun, but the health code violations alone are enough to turn your stomach.

He had also jinxed my telescope so that every time I looked at Mars, Marvin the Martian popped up and threatened to destroy the Earth with an explosive space-modulator.

I have a day job, which means my family isn't dependent on the writing income. So if I have an idea I like, I write it.

Plans were for adventurers. He preferred the goblin approach. Blind panic might not work all the time, but at least it saved you the stress of planning.

Pac-Man?" The beast looked up at me, oversized fangs giving it an expression that straddled the line between deadly and dopey. A string of drool waved pendulum-like from the jaw, pushing it firmly into the latter category. "When he was a puppy, he tried to eat a ghost," Pallas explained.

Which reminds me, there's a vampire hand in your freezer's ice maker." Seeing my aghast expression, she added, "Don't worry. I double-bagged it.

I like big books and I cannot lie.
You other readers can't deny
That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind
Like a hardbound brick of win.
Story bling.
Wanna swipe that thing
Cause you see that boy is speeding
Right through the book he's reading.
I'm hooked and I can't stop pleading.
Wanna curl up with that for ages,
All thousand pages.
Reviewers tried to warn me.
But with that plot you hooked
Me like Bradley.
Ooh, crack that fat spine.
You know I wanna make you mine.
This book is stella 'cause it ain't some quick novella.

Torches," Porak ordered.
"This is dumb," Jig grumbled as one of the others handed out torches. "Why not run ahead and warn any intruders that we're coming? Maybe we should sing, too, in case they're blind.

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Every libromancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening.

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion ... )

Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? "Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat ... " That's freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!

Given the issues with certain SF/F trophies (like the World Fantasy Award, which is 1) butt-ugly and 2) based on one disgustingly racist dude), all trophies from this point forward should be made out of LEGO. That way if you don't like it, you can just make it into something else.

The more they evolved from monsters into angsty, sexy superheroes, the more the odds of a human being surviving an encounter with an angry vampire shrank to nothing.

Any factual errors that remain are entirely the fault of Bob, who snuck into the offices at DAW to try to sabotage my book. I hate that guy.

I closed my eyes, feeling the tug of the books. This was my refuge, my fortress of solitude. Standing in this quiet cave, surrounded by walls of books, was normally enough to ease my mind no matter how stressful things got . . . but not today. Today the books called to me. Every one was a gateway to magic, waiting to be unlocked.

[In an interview when asked about becoming a fantasy creature] You know, it might be fun to be Sanguinarius Meyerii (better known as "sparklers"). They have all of the vampire superpowers and almost none of the weaknesses: no burning up in sunlight, no vulnerability to garlic, etc. As for my demise, I have no idea what you're talking about. Once I get this kind of power, I'm planning to live forever. It's the only way I'll catch up on my reading!

Smudge stood atop the water, burning as hot as I'd ever seen him and floating on a cushion of steam like a tiny, pissed-off hovercraft.

If you really want to kill a libriomancer, hook a bomb up to a big red button and tell him not to press it

I read more books for research purposes, whether it's a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.

New rule: every fantasy author who doesn't treat horses like tireless hairy motorcycles automatically gets a Hugo.

The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who might have worked, having been canonically established as being ineffective on wood, but nobody had ever figured out how to use the controls on the blasted thing.

Integration my undead ass. Did they teach you about the Great American Melting Pot in grade school?" she asked. "Some of us don't like the idea of being melted down and blended into stew for the rest of you to devour.

Those forced to make impossible choices are rarely loved. If it's approval and reputation you care about, then you have no place here.

Jeff [the werewolf] cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that?

The life of an adventurer appeared to consist of roughly six parts boredom to one part stark terror, or so it seemed to Jig.

Do you know why happily ever after is a lie?" Snow asked. "Because life is change.

There is no right choice. You chose. Your job now is to make the most of that choice.

The more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives.

If we ruled the world, I guarantee you they never would have cancelled Firefly

Judge not, lest ye be punched in the face for being a self-righteous prick.

Isaac: "Besides, is it really stealing if you're stealing from an asshole?"
Lena: "I'd have to double-check, but I don't think the criminal code includes an asshole clause.

Isaac, tell your girlfriend she can't bring weapons into holy-shit-your-spider's-on-fire!

Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.

Your religious beliefs are your business. They are not and should not be the basis for law. If you use them as justification to discriminate against others, don't be upset when others decide you're an asshole.
[Blog post of July 26, 2011]

Find the stories you love, and don't ever let anyone tell you you're wrong for loving them. If

None of us can foresee the consequences of such a step." Ponce de Leon ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. "Though after centuries of watching mankind, I sometimes suspect intelligence is overrated.

I've said for years - ever since I figured out how to write Goblin Hero - that it's important to give yourself permission to write crap. Perfection is the destroyer of art. It's paralyzing. Art, whether it's writing or painting or anything else, requires risk. And risk means you're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to fail.

This presents a serious question." They both looked at me. "What's that?" asked Lena. "Whether to start you off with a Doctor Who marathon or dive straight into Firefly.

I have seen John Scalzi's pose-off picture. There are no words. There is only inarticulate whimpering.

Like any child raised on tales of magical worlds beyond paintings and mirrors and wardrobes, I had yearned to enter Middle Earth, to reach through.

Instead of Debbie Does Dallas, we get Gandalf Guts Goblins.

Questing is hard. Fortunately, Thomas is here to spoon-feed them answers. We're one step away from him giving them an instruction sheet by Ikea, with cartoonish diagrams and a little goddess-slaying allen wrench.

When Theolyn died, the humans had built an enormous pyre and placed his body at the center. How was [Veka] supposed to know humans cremated their dead instead of cooking them? She had figured it out quickly enough, but not before Jimar and his ilk had spotted her standing at the pyre, fork in hand.

An infinite number of monkeys have said an infinite number of things about the Hugos this year. People on all sides have said intelligent and insightful things, and people on all sides have said asinine things. The amount of words spent on this makes the Wheel of Time saga look like flash fiction.

Of course, once you had yanked Conan the Barbarian's sword out of a book to fight off a rabid weresquirrel, "impossible" lost a lot of its punch.

Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book.

I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.

A hundred feet underground, in a fake field beneath a fake sky, with an ogre slaughtered like no more than a rat to a cat, and he sends us to search for the unusual.

The true enemy of good isn't evil, but fear. Evil will battle good, but fear will corrupt it.

- a Merraban saying, quoted by Admiral Pachelbel