Top 90 Anne McCaffrey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Make no judgments where you have no compassion.”

— Anne McCaffrey

2. “Who wills, Can. Who tries, Does. Who loves, Lives.”

— Anne McCaffrey

3. “Don’t leave me alone! A cry in the night, OF anguish heart-stiking, Of soul-killing fright. Live for my living Or else I must die Don’t leave me alone. A world heard that cry.”

— Anne McCaffrey

4. “That’s what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.”

— Anne McCaffrey

5. “Fear has its uses but cowardice has none.”

— Anne McCaffrey

6. “The blackest night must end in dawn, the light dispel the dreamer’s fear.”

— Anne McCaffrey

7. “Drummer, beat, and piper, blowHarper, strike, and soldier, goFree the flame and sear the grassesTil the dawning Red Star passes.”

— Anne McCaffrey

8. “Ridicule was a better defense than truth.”

— Anne McCaffrey

9. “Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.”

— Anne McCaffrey

10. “Necessity breeds solution.”

— Anne McCaffrey

11. “My eyes are green, my hair is silver and I freckly; the rest is subject to change without notice.”

— Anne McCaffrey

12. “But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.”

— Anne McCaffrey

13. “The eyes of a vengeful man miss few details he can turn to advantage.”

— Anne McCaffrey

14. “Mostly I’m telling people that they don’t have to be victims.”

— Anne McCaffrey

15. “So often lately he’d come to realize that things were not as they seemed. There were hidden facets to everything. You’d think you had what you wanted in your grasp and, when you looked closely, it wasn’t what it had seemed to be from a distance.”

— Anne McCaffrey

16. “Oh, Tongue, give sound to joy and sing Of hope and promise on dragonwing.”

— Anne McCaffrey

17. “But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end.”

— Anne McCaffrey

18. “I also don’t have organized religion on Pern. I figured – since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing – that religion was one problem Pern didn’t need.”

— Anne McCaffrey

19. “Above us, outlined against the brilliant sky, dragons crowded every available perching space on the Rim. And the sun made a gold of every one of them.”

— Anne McCaffrey

20. “I have my good days and my bad days, but I don’t have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn’t count the cost – and it takes a lot – to write.”

— Anne McCaffrey

21. “You idiot! You misbegotten son of a jinn’s meeting with a jackass, may the grave of your maternal grandmother be defiled by the dung of ten thousand syphilitic she-camels!”

— Anne McCaffrey

22. “The horse, the noblest, bravest, proudest, most courageous and certainly the most perverse and infuriating animal that humans ever domesticated.”

— Anne McCaffrey

23. “Tell a story! Don’t try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first!”

— Anne McCaffrey

24. “I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.”

— Anne McCaffrey

25. “There’s nothing wrong in doubting. It sometimes leads to greater faith.”

— Anne McCaffrey

26. “I’m 78, I’m on my pension in Ireland, and all that good stuff.”

— Anne McCaffrey

27. “Because we build the worlds we wouldn’t mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there.”

— Anne McCaffrey

28. “Man is wise to fear: it sharpens the sense of self-preservation.”

— Anne McCaffrey

29. “There wasn’t a man alive in Pern who hadn’t secretly cherished the notion that he might be able to Impress a dragon. That he could be linked for life to the love and sustaining admiration of these gentle great beasts. That he could transverse Pern in a twinkling, astride his dragon. That he would never suffer the loneliness that was the condition of most men – a dragonrider always had his dragon.”

— Anne McCaffrey

30. “Each email contains an unsubscribe link. We will NEVER sell, rent, loan, or abuse your email address in ANY way. Writing has been so much a part of my life that I’m really quite annoyed that I can’t do as much as I used to.”

— Anne McCaffrey

31. “When the tiger executes a merger with the goat, which one walks away?”

— Anne McCaffrey

32. “At age 77, I need the help of someone with more energy than I can now summon to finish a book.”

— Anne McCaffrey

33. “Time, time, time. It’s always the wrong time. When is now the time?”

— Anne McCaffrey

34. “To cry was to release all sorts of ugly little pressures and tensions. Like waking out of a long, dark dream to a sun-filled day.”

— Anne McCaffrey

35. “The bronze rider of Mnementh, Lord F’lar, will require quarters for himself. I, F’nor, brown rider, prefer to be lodged with the wingmen. We are, in number, twelve.” F’lar liked that touch of F’nor’s, totting up the wing strength, as if Fax were incapable of counting.”

— Anne McCaffrey

36. “I do outlines when I’m writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.”

— Anne McCaffrey

37. “A real scientist solves problems, not wails that they are unsolvable.”

— Anne McCaffrey

38. “I’m very fond of the Talent series, and also the Crystal Singer trio.”

— Anne McCaffrey

39. “A man didn’t specialize in mathematics because he had a rare talent for human relationships.”

— Anne McCaffrey

40. “I don’t often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.”

— Anne McCaffrey

41. “A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.”

— Anne McCaffrey

42. “The thing is, emotion – if it’s visibly felt by the writer – will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.”

— Anne McCaffrey

43. “Some folk, too, believe what the loudest talker says. And some folk because it frightens them not to.”

— Anne McCaffrey

44. “When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and discussed must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category “Fairy-tale”? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character?”

— Anne McCaffrey

45. “Complacency and ignorance,” Zebara suggested, pouring more brandy. “A very good way to keep a large population so tractable the society lacks rebellion.”

— Anne McCaffrey

46. “I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens.”

— Anne McCaffrey

47. “It must be an amazing mind-set, Afra thought, to consider one’s self the only being of worth in the galaxy. There had been Humans who had had such delusions. They had generally died because of them.”

— Anne McCaffrey

48. “People don’t change, love. React first, think later, regret at leisure.”

— Anne McCaffrey

49. “I think the Internet, particularly the availability of information, is great. I do a lot of correspondence on-line and have a chat line to talk to my fans as well.”

— Anne McCaffrey

50. “A man ought not be afraid to say he didn’t know. Nor a woman.”

— Anne McCaffrey