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When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that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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It's hard for me to understand how poverty can be invisible to so many people, since I see it everywhere. Readers sometimes think this world is so different; on the one hand, they feel connected to the people I'm writing about, and on the other hand, they're saying their lives are a world away.
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In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me.
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I think I might be hitting the zeitgeist. All around you, you're looking at beautiful people that have been turned into robots. Maybe the eye is craving a little upper lip fur.
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If you want to remain the best, you have to keep on doing what you are good at.
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The older I get, the less I care about what’s cool. I realize I’m old and weird.
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Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.
