L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Quotations

According to my royalty statements, 'The Green Progression' sold 392 copies in hardcover.

I only did about one novel a year while I was working full time, but since 1993, I've averaged two and a half books a year.

I'm not sure there are too many people who write what I write.

If I recall correctly, I think I signed my first contract with Tor in 1983.

'The One-Eyed Man' is a novel that was one I never intended to write.

I actually started out as a poet in high school. I published in small literary magazines for probably about ten years. I entered the Yale Younger Poet contest every year, until I was too old to be a younger poet, and I never got more than a form rejection letter from them.

I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse.

I've often said that there's no one thing that I do or have done that is particularly unique. There have been a lot of other authors who were in the military. There have been a few others who were pilots. There have certainly been a lot of other people who were in politics or served congressional staffs.

My experiences in the military, the private sector, and as a congressional staffer were at times almost enough to drive me crazy. Writing offered the all-too-often-cited creative outlet.

Science fiction writers have usually been very poor prognosticators of the future, either in literary or technological terms, and that's because we're all too human and, I think, have the tendency to see what we want to or, in the case of those more paranoid, what we fear.

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'