Ken Liu Quotes

Researching real history has taught me to be bolder and more imaginative in building fantasy worlds and writing fantasy characters, to seek out the margins of history and the forgotten tales that illuminate the whole, complex truth of our flawed yet wondrous nature as a species.

Ken Liu

• Writing
• Real
• Truth
• History
• Nature

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Quotes to Explore

• I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Life
  • Truth
  • My Life

• But Eraserhead was the first real intense kind of thing I had ever done before the cameras and Lynch had to really bring me down a lot and he still does.

  

  Jack Nance
  • Real
  • Done
  • Me

• Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen compassionately or nonjudgmentally to another person - not to get too heavy about it - but I once heard somebody say that was a form of real prayer.

  

  Gabriel Byrne
  • Real
  • Experience
  • Prayer

• After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.

  

  Barbara Kingsolver
  • People
  • Truth
  • Parents

• Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.

  

  Gail Carson Levine
  • Up
  • Real
  • Kids

• Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc... but it has always been this way. It is the same with the nature of some works by Giotto or Massacio, or the color of life as expressed by Van Gogh.

  

  Fernando Botero
  • Life
  • Art
  • Nature

• Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Writing
  • Place
  • Criticism

• But 18 years after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, there still remains unfinished work to completely rectify and close this regrettable chapter in our Nation's history.

  

  Xavier Becerra
  • Work
  • History
  • Years

• I really like all of the characters in 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt, especially Camilla, the one girl. I find her fascinating.

  

  Hannah Murray
  • History
  • Girl
  • Find

• One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

  

  Rachel Field
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Friends

• The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.

  

  Nathaniel Branden
  • World
  • Country
  • History

• We know that the elements in play in a show like 'Confederate' are much more raw, much more real, and people come into them much more sensitive and more invested, than they do with a story about a place called 'Westeros,' which none of them had ever heard of before they read the books or watched the show.

  

  D. B. Weiss
  • People
  • Real
  • Know

• 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.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • World
  • Writing
  • Girl

• Indeed, throughout much of history and in many cultures, redheads have been viewed with suspicion and fear - and even killed - because of their hair.

  

  Kate Williams
  • History
  • Fear
  • Hair

• Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Yourself

• We are not by nature cruel.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Nature
  • Cruel

• I'm a country girl. I have to be in nature, so my daughter is exposed to it a lot.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Country
  • Nature
  • Girl

• I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.

  

  Aasif Mandvi
  • Done
  • Nature
  • Culture

• I like to think that I'm not as ominous in real life.

  

  Daniel Dae Kim
  • Life
  • Real
  • Think

• From lower to the higher next,Not to the top, is Nature’s text;And embryo Good, to reach full stature,Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

  

  James Russell Lowell
  • Good
  • Nature
  • Evil

• This seclusion of the artist with his work, sometimes misconceived as a selfish thing, is in truth as needful a tool as any, if a vision is to be made clear to others. And all the men I have known do creative work obtained it; either mechanically, by the walls of a workroom, or by that withdrawal into themselves which is part of their power.

  

  Georgiana Burne-Jones
  • Truth
  • Artist
  • Create

• While the angels, all pallid and wan,Uprising, unveiling, affirmThat the play is the tragedy, 'Man',And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Hero

• What I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the 'who' will always matter more than the 'what.' It's fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it's happening to.

  

  Lisa Gardner
  • Up
  • Character
  • Fun

• Researching real history has taught me to be bolder and more imaginative in building fantasy worlds and writing fantasy characters, to seek out the margins of history and the forgotten tales that illuminate the whole, complex truth of our flawed yet wondrous nature as a species.

  

  Ken Liu
  • Writing
  • Real
  • Truth