My first website went up in 1995. On it I ran a feature called Ask Nicola. Readers would email me questions, I'd answer whichever took my fancy. Nicola Griffith More Quotes by Nicola Griffith More Quotes From Nicola Griffith Dogs own space and cats own time. Nicola Griffith cat space dog Reading is the gateway to so many things that helps makes it possible for seven billion people to live together on one planet. Literature is the great extra-somatic keeper of our knowledge of what it is to be human. Reading elevates us. We read to be our best selves. Nicola Griffith reading self people Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it. Nicola Griffith joy people world I want to write about grown-up things. Nicola Griffith want writing If you have the language gift, you can use it as a tool. Nicola Griffith gift you language use Everyone has this notion of the Middle Ages - certainly the early Middle Ages - as being this very superstitious era. I think that all eras are superstitious. We all have our magical thinking. Nicola Griffith everyone being think thinking The only way to be a novelist, to think that you can create something others will give themselves up to for a dozen hours or more, is to have psychotic self-belief. Nicola Griffith will think you way I'm not sure many writers are trying to reconcile all the things that are separated in our culture - body and mind, urban and pastoral, lyricism and hardboiled, men and women, joy and grief. I tried to do quite a lot, but I wanted to create a serious work of literature. Nicola Griffith women work men culture There are days when I should be writing, and I am so tired that I can't. And the fatigue also affects my emotions, making me not even care about writing. There are days when I wake up so angry I can barely speak, and also days when I am so sad. Nicola Griffith i-am me angry sad I'm tired of being considered a lesbian writer, tired of being a science-fiction writer, tired of being a thriller writer. I'm a writer. Period. Story matters to me. Nicola Griffith story being me tired