M. John Harrison Quotes
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.
Quotes to Explore
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In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
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The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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It was really in the Golden Age, between the two world wars, when the pure detective story - of which the locked room mystery is really the ultimate form - became popular.
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There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.
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I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
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I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.
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I'm not going to change the world overnight. It's one person at a time, and hopefully they're people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really, truly embrace colorblind casting.
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When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.
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In certain ways, we, many of us, stopped paying attention to the world. I have to think we would have moved on the whole climate issue in a different way if we'd been paying better attention.
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I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.
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I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that's really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it's very different. You're out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn't that fascinating.
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I still get excited by working with big names. You have that initial moment of, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to work with Tom Cruise!'
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I've always been a fan of science fiction. My family, we all used to watch 'Star Trek' together, which is kind of a nerdy family activity.
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No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
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From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.
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Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.
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We are learning more about the humanity of the unborn child. Science and truth support the prolife movement.
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I've had a number of near misses during my travels that in retrospect seem of greater concern than they did at the time. I guess that is what happens with age.
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You have punished me long enough, you have punished yourself long enough. Return to me. I beg.
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But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.
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I don't think I've ever had a real fashion disaster.
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Russian culture is multifaceted and diverse. So if you want to understand, to feel Russia, then of course you need to read books, Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol and others. Listen to music. Tchaikovsky. Watch our classical ballet. But the most important thing is that you need to talk with people.
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Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.
