Chelsea Cain

“People come to Portland, many of them for the quality of life. They love the physical space here. And yet every year, people climbing the mountain get killed by avalanches.”

“People read stuff over your shoulder when you're in public, and when you write the kind of stuff I do, and people read it over your shoulder, it makes you a little self-conscious.”

“I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.”

“I've written books for awhile, but always on a pretty small scale and always pretty self-indulgent. I chose projects that I thought would be really fun to work on and found friends to work on them with me, and it was all about the process.”

“Of the paperbacks that you see at the airport, I am the most violent woman writer.”

“Writing tips are like mini skirts. Sometimes they fit perfectly, sometimes they make you cry, and sometimes you can reuse the material and sew yourself a pillow or something.”

“I finished 'Heartsick' with my daughter asleep in her bassinet by my desk, a feat that any new mother will tell you cannot be sufficiently praised.”

“I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.”

“I'm a sucker for a screwed-up protagonist. We all have issues.”

“I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened - the fallout of the bad thing, when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged.”

“I was obsessed with Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan books, delightfully twisted stuff.”

“You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.”

“I was born in Iowa City and spent my early childhood on a hippie commune just outside of town.”

“There's something about the Pacific Northwest, the scale of it, and the fact that not so long ago people came here and died getting here, and then died the first winter they were here. There's this breathtaking beauty, just a little bit of moss on the tree, just this little thread of danger, and the sinister. And I really like that.”

“She was a beautiful girl, but the lack of any spark dampened her prettiness.”

“I grew up in Washington State and then eventually found my way back to Iowa City for grad school.”

“He had talked to hundreds of witnesses. And he knew that if someone felt pressured, they would try too hard, and their imagination would fill what their memory couldn't recover.”

“I was pregnant with my daughter when I started writing my first thriller, so I guess you could blame hormones.”

“I like signing books for a living; I do. But you have no idea the panic that sets in. I am not a very good speller. Put me in a stresser situation, and I lose all capacity to recall how to spell the most simple names.”

“Often we don't even know what we think ourselves about people in our lives.”