Top 13 Quotes by Paul S. Kemp

The human mind has infinite capacity to rationalize, and evil characters just push that boundary a bit. Whatever they're doing, they think it makes sense to do it, and they think they have a good reason to do it. In short, they feel justified.

I always say that characters must drive plots, never the reverse. Writing about large-scale events creates the risk that the scope of the events themselves can overwhelm the characters. I emphatically do not want that. That was the only trepidation I felt when I started 'The Twilight War.'

My favorite class as an undergraduate was a political theory class on justice. Now, 'justice' is hardly a self-defining term, and much smarter men than I have developed various definitions over the centuries. The class put Plato at one end and Nietzsche at the other, and off we went.

I'm a transactional lawyer, which involves a lot of negotiation. If nothing else, that's given me a good eye for human motivation and frequent case studies in peculiar psychological quirks. I think that's served me fairly well as a writer.

I don't do 'political correctness,' whatever that means. I write the stories I want to write, featuring the characters I want to feature. I don't touch demographic bases to appease this group or that. I write what I want. Full stop.