Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Generally, a desirable, practically attainable idea, suggested in prophecy, has a chance of forcing itself into reality by its very existence.
Authors are often sent a number of books to read for possible review and advance praise. It can be easy for new books to get lost in the pile.
Most of us do not, in fact, read another language, and so when we read a translation, we have no way of knowing what has been changed or added.
The process, not the results, have to be the reason a writer writes. Otherwise, creating a four-hundred-page novel is just too daunting a task.
My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.
I had already drafted the manuscript that would become my first book by the time I graduated from college, but I had no idea what to do with it.
I am not an expert on Chinese science fiction. I probably know more than anyone else in the West, but that doesn't actually mean I am an expert.
I find most 'rules' about how to write a 'good story' confining, and I enjoy writing stories that don't look like stories at all on the surface.
My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.
I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.
The U.S. was the immigration country of choice even for alien jellyfish things that turned humans into scary monsters. It made you proud, really.
Where names of people or places would mean little to a contemporary reader, I figured "translation errors" could create interesting new meanings.
We have for years been building a society in which everybody plunders everybody, and while we are weary of being plundered, we enjoy the plunder.
As for the best '80s action movie, I'm going to be predictable here and say 'Die Hard.' I watch that movie at least twice a year. Perfect script.
What makes a book unique isn't always about having one big grand new idea. It's about combining many different ideas in new and interesting ways.
The idea of determinism combined with complete human responsibility struck me as very hard to reconcile with an idea of justice, let alone mercy.
I'm looking for stories that make me sit up and take notice. For engagement with language and style in ways that the genre doesn't see enough of.
My first published novel, 'American Rust,' took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.
Keeping a diary is advanced-level living. I spend way too much time trying not to curl up in the corner like a giant fetus & weep to keep a diary.
Knowing how to live is not something we have to teach children. Knowing how to live is something we have to be careful not to take away from them.
My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.
I don't have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me-some of which change, some of which don't.
Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.
The way a story makes an argument is quite different from the way a persuasive essay does it. Emotional truth and the logic of metaphors dominate.
That was the trouble with lies: it was very important to remember them accurately when, generally, they were the things you most wanted to forget.
Privacy is something that we maintain for the good of ourselves and others. Secrecy we keep to separate ourselves from others, even those we love.
We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.
Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet.
it is possible to study fashion the way one can study a work of art, so that it reflects significantly upon the issues and conflicts of its own day.
I have to warn you that my bedroom isn't the best place to stage an assault on me. It's where I'm at my weakest, with my bed a mere twenty feet away.
Prejudice validates itself as righteous abhorrence of the criminally deviant. So Christian homophobia is just a metonym of that abjection in general.
'The Stars are Legion' is part space opera, part thriller, about two warring families battling it out for control over a legion of organic starships.
I'm interested in getting deep into a person's consciousness and doing so in ways in which the narrator is secondary to the character's own thoughts.
One of my big inspirations was Céleste Mogador. She was a courtesan who wrote her memoirs in order to pay off her debts, which is a hilarious gesture.
Reading requires a loner's temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.
A faith-holder puts himself below his faith and lets it guide his actions. The fanatic puts himself above it and uses it as an excuse for his actions.
You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen.
I often say if men were meant to fly we would have been born with either feathers and wings or at the very least parachutes that pop out of our butts.
Of course, I had a paradigm of a certain city in my head when I wrote these stories, a city that inspired my imagination, but it was only inspiration.
Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list.
It's okay if you get rejected 20, 30 or 200 times... You don't need everyone to like your story - you just need one person who really likes your story.
There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves.
A bilingual marriage, by the way, is a great way to stay together for longer than you normally would because you can't understand each other very well.
And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.
It's not only possible, but likely that the Nobel Prize in economics will go in alternate years to people who disagree on nearly everything fundamental.
Sight is a slick and overbearing autocrat, trumpeting its prodigal knowledge and perceptions so forcefully that it drowns out the other, subtler senses.
My mother had faith in me, had more faith in me than I had in myself, and knowing that she did made me try to find faith. She believed in trying things.
As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.
Las Vegas is incredible. Either you love it or you're a classy person with morals. I fall into the former category. It's definitely bled into my writing.
Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.