Pamela Sargent Quotes
Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
Quotes to Explore
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'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.
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I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.
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This is kind of weird, but I eat lemons with salt as snack. They're so good!
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Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.
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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
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I'm now happily remarried to a good cook, which encourages me to be lazy. I like to think that I'm a new man, but perhaps I'm not. I offset it by doing the ironing, though. She has a small farm in the New Forest with a herd of cattle, so she serves up a steak and kidney pie made with her own beef.
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It's always good news when you're closer to the truth.
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I think that every therapist that I know, including my dad and my sister, have their own issues. But that empathy is what makes them good at their job.
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Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.
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When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.
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Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
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Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'
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I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.
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There are people who are good for letters and others that are good for numbers.
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Why is partying and having a good time bad?
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I don't put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction - looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That's a science fictional tool.
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I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.
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I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent as possible so I could get on with it and tell the story, which was inherently interesting.
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The cool thing for me is, I go to a lot of conventions - a lot of science fiction conventions like Comic-Con - and there are always a lot of attendants of color. And I think some people believe that black people or people of color are not into science fiction or hero shows or genre shows.
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I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
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Everybody needs to find their own path and the best way for themselves to connect to this world.
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I think it just takes one little snowflake to start a snowball to go down the hill. My contribution and, say, Kendrick Lamar's and some chosen others' start the snowball. That's all I can hope for. I don't know if I'm comfortable being quote-unquote a leader.
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I definitely feel that society sets expectations for transgender people to fit in and makes us feel as if we have to dress a certain way so that we blend in with everyone else. But I believe all transgender individuals should be able to wear whatever they want and not worry about fitting in.
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Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
