-
But in fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.
-
There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.
-
So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.
-
I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction.
-
Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say.
-
I revear all the gods but those that delight in cruelty. If Ra's light is kindly in your eyes than may his light shine on us all.
-
Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that.
-
It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.
-
I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?
-
What it boils down to is that parenting a child with autism is a difficult job; writing about it is far easier.
-
People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day - even hour to hour.
-
My personal feeling about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real world, to our everyday world.
-
No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
-
It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long.
-
I had, of course, no model for that sort of woman being married, but I can make that up as I go along.
-
I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.
-
Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people.
-
There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.
-
Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.
-
Motivation is the power behind plot.
-
Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.
-
Having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.
-
You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.
-
This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins.