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" Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Narrative
Meaningful
Enough
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" Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Writing
Hide
Lie
" Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Problems
Down
Boring
" I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Fear
American
Off
" Maybe storytelling belongs in audio - a short story is the length of a commute. That can be a sacred spot where you have the ear of the reader without having to compete with other media like games or TV. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Story
You
Storytelling
" I used to work for a newspaper that covered local resource issues, and my coworkers and friends were journalists. Their reporting work was always pretty grim. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Always
Work
Pretty
" When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
Future
I Am
" We're all happier when we know less, because the details are frightening and haven't really improved much. The more you pay attention, the more horrifying the world is. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
World
You
Know
" Sometimes when we label something dystopian fiction, I feel like we're trying very hard not to use the words 'science fiction,' because science fiction has those horrible connotations of rocket ships and bodacious babes. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Words
Trying
Science
" I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Liar
Lie
Proud
" There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Parents
People
Country
" I think there are narratives going on all the time that we think of as tangential - up until they turn out to be deciding factors in our lives. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Going
Out
Think
" As an author, you're really grateful for the people who are supporting you, but on some other level, that can be a dangerous echo chamber. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
You
Grateful
Level
" I started really thinking a lot about where does a country go when we stop being able to speak to each other, when a nation stops being able to solve problems because its ideological differences become so deep that it just becomes dysfunctional. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Problems
Country
Thinking
" People don't actually stay still, you know - when their area is a disaster, they go somewhere else, right? And that's just a natural human impulse. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
People
Disaster
Go
" My conception of my ideal reader has expanded quite a lot as I've matured: Ultimately when I think of my ideal reader, it's someone who's not sitting down with the intention of automatically arguing with the book: somebody who's going to give me enough slack to tell my story. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Enough
Story
Me
" I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we're failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Work
Together
Problems
" I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Return
Reach
Choice
" When we live the 21st-century good life, almost every aspect of it is predicated on not looking at the implications of what we're up to. Happiness at this point has a lot to do with not looking, so you don't feel complicit in some vast and awful enterprise. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Life
Looking
Up
" I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Change
Ideas
Me
" I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Broken
Falling
Stories
" A wise human would have an understanding of the supply chain and how the pieces fit together. But it's against our nature to think about it. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Human
Together
Nature
" The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Young
Me
Fantasy
" Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences - large scale engineering, neuroscience. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
Science Fiction
Engineering
" I'm less crazy and unhappy when I'm writing. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Crazy
Writing
Unhappy
" I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave? "
Paolo Bacigalupi
React
How
Question
" When we talk about dystopias, especially in young adult fiction, a lot of them are essentially science fictional futures. They aren't necessarily tied to the traditional concept of dystopia. And so in that space, my impression is that kids love reading about weird, wild, adventurous places, and dystopia fits that bill. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Weird
Science
Space
" I am interested in agricultural corporations and how they function. The idea that they own the genetics of our food supply is a really compelling thing to me. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Me
Own
Genetics
" I don't know why we choose to reach out to help another person, or why we decide that we can't, and withdraw and try to care only for ourselves, but I'm fascinated by that choice. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Care
Choice
Choose
" By nature I'm sort of an introvert. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Introvert
Sort
Nature
" As far as 'Windup Girl' becoming a hit - none of us expected that. 'Night Shade' was just hoping not to lose their shirts, and I had grown up hearing from everyone that science fiction didn't sell, so all of our expectations were very low. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
Expectations
Girl