“I have confused ideas of deity, heavily influenced by mind-altering years of reading science fiction, that do not often trouble me, but one thing I know for certain, and have known since the age of five or six, is that I really can't stand the God of Abraham. In fact, I consider him to constitute the pattern to which every true asshole I have ever known in my life has pretty well conformed.” KnowsYearsMindWellsIdeasFactsAgeCertainReadingFictionKnownFiveTroubleOne ThingSixScience FictionPatternsConfusedDeitiesAbrahamVery True Author:Michael Chabon
“I grew up a really nerdy kid. I read science fiction and fantasy voraciously, for the first 16 years of my life. I read a lot of classic Cold War science fiction, which is much of the best science fiction, so I speak the language well, which is a commodity that's not easy to come by in Hollywood.” YearsFirstsWellsWarKidsSpeakLanguageEasyFictionFantasyGrewColdGrew UpHollywoodScience FictionClassicCold WarCommodityNerdyBest ScienceScience Fiction And Fantasy Author:Jon Spaihts
“It's the fantasy of first love. If you've been married for 400 years, as I have, it's nice to experience first love again and you can vicariously through a book. And it is such a fantasy. It takes you away from doing the dishes and the laundry. I think of this as a contemporary romance rather than erotic fiction.” IfsThinkingYearsFirstsBookRomanceFictionFantasyNiceMarriedContemporaryDishesFirst LoveEroticLaundryLove Again Author:E. L. James
“If I would had been born years earlier, I would have been in all the Westerns. It's just the way that the industry goes. But now, we are in an age of a lot of different kinds of fears, and you have the science fiction and horror genres doing our morality plays the same way that they would have done in Westerns. I absolutely accept it. In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.” IfsWayYearsKindHas BeensDifferentDonePlayAgeBornFictionAcceptingFantasyPaintingIndustryMoralityHorrorScience FictionGenreAbstractDifferent KindsHorror GenreAbstract Painting Author:Lance Henriksen
“You know, every year 'Torchwood' has become something a little different than it was before. It's still sci-fi, but it doesn't just deal with spaceships and aliens all the time, because we've done that. Our science fiction is more psychological.” KnowsYearsLittlesStillsDifferentDoneDealsFictionScience FictionPsychologicalAliensSci FiSpaceshipsTorchwood Author:John Barrowman
“I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.” WritingYearsStoriesUsedMy OwnFictionHorrorScience FictionComplicatedTalesVersionsShort StoryTeensHoodRobinsRobin HoodComplicated Things Author:Peter Robinson
“Autobiographical writings, essays, interviews, various other things... All the non-fiction prose I wanted to keep, that was the idea behind this collected volume, which came out about few years ago. I didn't think of Winter Journal, for example, as an autobiography, or a memoir. What it is is a literary work, composed of autobiographical fragments, but trying to attain, I hope, the effect of music.” ThinkingWritingTryingYearsIdeasWantedBehindsFictionEffectsExampleYears AgoWinterVariousMemoirInterviewsProseVolumeJournalAutobiographyEssaysFragmentsNon FictionLiterary WorksWriting Essays Author:Paul Auster
“When I was hired by the University of Washington extension school to teach the one-year fiction writing course - 96 classroom hours - I quickly determined that I knew only about an hour's worth off the top of my head.” WritingYearsSchoolCoursesHoursFictionTeachUniversityDeterminedClassroomExtensionsFiction Writing Author:James Thayer
“So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs.” WritingYearsLongJobsPoliticalBitsFictionCoupleLong TimeCriticsMagazinesEditorialsWriting FictionConsultantsNonprofits Author:Tod Goldberg
“I've had many students over the years, sometimes even very sophisticated students, who will be writing and will hit a wall. Often I find it's because they're working out of sequence. Maybe some people can do that, but I don't think that's how fiction works. It's a discovery.” PeopleThinkingWritingYearsSometimesCan DoFictionStudentsWallDiscoveryWork OutWorking ItSophisticatedSequence Author:T.C. Boyle
“The first time I took a fiction writing class was sophomore year. And I just found myself taking that extremely seriously, in a way that I didn't take anything else seriously. So I guess that was the start of it.” WayWritingYearsFirstsFoundFictionClassFirst TimeFiction WritingSophomoreSophomore Year Author:John Brandon
“Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.” IfsThinkingKnowsWayYearsHumansFactsLastsTurnsCoursesDifficultFictionProgressTaughtProjectsScientistClaimsRelationScience FictionHuman LifePaceUnderestimateScopeWay Of ThinkingTaught UsSingularityScientific Progress Author:George Pattison
“For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction.” WritingYearsLongDreamOpportunityRealizingFictionChildhoodCrimeLong TimeTrialsWorking ItCrime FictionCourtroomChildhood Dreams Author:Marcia Clark
“I think I can safely call 2012 average. Overall, it was a stronger year for nonfiction than fiction - a situation that would've surprised me back in January, when I was looking forward to big new novels from several authors I really love.” ThinkingYearsI CanBigsFictionSituationNovelStrongerAverageNonfictionLooking ForwardJanuary Author:David Edelstein
“The big thing is it's a domestic drama. Everything else in science fiction tends to be high-concept. Really for the last 40 years or so I think sci-fi's been a little cold and a little inhuman quite often - certainly since the 1980s - and I really wanted to do something that almost felt like a regular, real-life drama but just set it in a sci-fi setting. I think the best stuff is always like that.” ThinkingYearsLittlesRealBigsWantedLastsFeltStuffFictionColdDramaConceptsScience FictionReal LifeSettingSettingsSci FiBig ThingsInhumanDrama Life Author:Mark Millar
“In the first 27 years of my life, I never had written a single non-technical word. I went to engineering college and went to business school. I never knew I could write fiction of any form.” WritingYearsFirstsSchoolFormFictionWrittenCollegeEngineeringBusiness School Author:Karan Bajaj
“I have a 22-year-old son, and when my son was born I made a decision to raise him. My husband and I took turns working, and it's easier to raise a kid in the documentary world, where you go away for two weeks or three weeks rather than the months that you spend on a feature. That was and still is much more open to women DPs than the world of fiction.” WorldYearsMadeStillsTwoKidsTurnsThreeBornDecisionFictionWeekSonMonthsEasierHusbandRaisesFeaturesGoing AwayMy HusbandMy SonDocumentariesTwo Weeks Author:Maryse Alberti
“Right around my first year of college - I remember "Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison, just moved me tremendously. The power of language and how it can peel back truths, bring things to the surface. So I learned a lot from fiction.” YearsFirstsRememberSongLanguageFictionCollegeMovedSurfaceSolomonPower Of Language Author:Barack Obama
“I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.” YearsRememberFictionYears AgoPublishingRemember WhenLatino Author:Sandra Cisneros
“'Breaking Bad.' Because it's the best American narrative fiction of the last ten years.” YearsLastsFictionTenNarrativeBest American Author:David Benioff
“Speed is not an indicator of quality in terms of fiction. That's true of one's relative slowness or swiftness - taking 10 years to write a book or taking 10 days to write a book (or a comic or a film or an angry postcard) guarantees nothing in terms of how good or how bad that story is.” WritingYearsBookStoriesFilmTermFictionQualityAngrySpeedComicGuaranteesRelativeIndicatorsSlownessPostcardsSwiftness Author:Chuck Wendig
“I'm a big genre fan. I'm a big science fiction nerd and horror film nerd. I'm obsessed with Pam Grier. I wanted to be her for all of my teenage years.” YearsBigsWantedFilmFictionFansHorrorScience FictionGenreObsessedTeenageNerdHorror FilmTeenage Years Author:Alex Stapleton
“I love thrillers. I would even read certain science fiction, although I haven't been a devotee for many years.” YearsCertainFictionHavensScience FictionThrillersDevotee Author:Frederick Busch
“My work is very eclectic. I write books that range from writing fiction, writing fable where I am very directly trying to imagine alternate worlds, to writing about [Buckminster] Fuller who was the ultimate world man creating all sorts of alternate worlds and believing that they were imminent to my own work of - for instance, a project that I've been working on for some year and a half, two years now that continues to evolve has been what I call Deep Time Photography.” MenWorldWritingTryingYearsBelieveHas BeensTwoBookMy OwnHalfFictionImagineProjectsCreatingPhotographyUltimateInstanceEvolveRangeTwo YearsFablesFiction WritingWriting FictionEclecticBuckminster Fuller Author:Jonathon Keats
“[Michael] Chabon, who is himself a brash and playful and ebullient genre-bender, writes about how our idea of what constitutes literary fiction is a very narrow idea that, world-historically, evolved over the last sixty or seventy years or so - that until the rise of that kind of third-person-limited, middle-aged-white-guy-experiencing-enlightenment story as in some way the epitome of literary fiction - before that all kinds of crazy things that we would now define as belonging to genre were part of the literary canon.” WorldWayWritingYearsKindPersonsIdeasStoriesLastsGuyWhiteFictionCrazyMiddleEnlightenmentThirdsAll KindsGenreBelongingSixtySeventiesMiddle AgedCanonCrazy ThingsEpitomeWhite GuysThird PersonBrash Author:Emily Barton
“When somebody you've known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you're trying to re-create in fiction is that.” ThinkingTryingYearsFictionKnownHuge Author:George Saunders
“That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.” ThinkingYearsKindReasonStuffFictionWorstReaderInternetReachingShallowConsolation Author:George Saunders
“I would love to take control of the entire universe and for five years you give every movie the same widespread distribution no matter what movie and see if there's a real discrepancy between people coming to see science-fiction films or superhero films. I seriously bet there would be no discernible difference.” PeopleIfsGivingYearsRealMatterWould BeFilmUniverseDifferencesFictionFiveNo Matter WhatScience FictionFive YearsSuperheroDistributionTake ControlDiscrepanciesDiscrepancies Between Author:Kenneth Lonergan
“I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.” PeopleWritingTryingYearsSaidWantedYoungProcessResultsFictionFantasyCreativeParticularTenLateAdultsElsewhereLiberatingNon FictionWriting FictionForeseen Author:Lloyd Alexander