Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" How clear can I put this? I am not denying female oppression; I am trying to stop it by calling for a more fluid masculinity. "

Related Quotes:

" When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King. "

" Beware of the gap: the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it, and you end up falling through. "

" Parents can only do what they think is best, with the experience they have. The learning curve for every parent is that there's a limit to how much they can shield children from. "

" It took me at least all my 20s and some of my 30s to get the confidence to realise I could just write about what I wanted to write about without having to pass a test or look super clever. "

" You have to be good. And keep getting better. For every writer taken on, another is dropped. A paradox: you have to rise to stay level. "

" We need, ultimately, to be able to view mental health with the same clear-headedness we show when talking about physical health. "

" I'd love for mental illness to be seen in the way that other horrible illnesses are. When people get cancer, very few parents will say, 'Oh I feel so bad for giving you so much unhealthy food over the years.' "

" To say that creative writing courses are all useless is almost as silly as saying all editors are useless. Writers of all levels can benefit from other instructive voices. "

" Being a depressive should not imply danger any more than being a man or even a human should. Mental illness isn't a them/us issue; we are all on the scale somewhere. So we must be very careful to resist ignorance and combat the stigma that leads to dangerous silence. "

" Robots are great. I am saying that now so that when a future civilization of robots takes us captive, they will search through the 'Guardian' web archive and realise I said, 'Robots are great,' and then they'll choose to save me. "

" The aim of any writer, even a fantasy writer, is the pursuit of truth. "

" Teenagers are philosophers. They are thinking about the big things like existence and identity at a time when their identities are changing so fast. "

" British culture is very cynical sometimes of overt displays of sentimentality, and I think that becomes almost a suspicion of emotion, or a suspicion of someone making a grand statement. It is always easier to be ironic, or 'meta', or coolly postmodern. But I think there is such a thing as authentic sentimentality. "

" Neuroscience is a baby science, a mere century old, and our scientific understanding of the brain is nowhere near where we'd like it to be. We know more about the moons of Jupiter than what is inside of our skulls. "

" Books are our umbilical cord to life. They connect us deeply, and with more meaning, to the world. They aren't about escaping from ourselves but expanding ourselves and finding within us the tools we need to survive. "

" Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself. "

" At school, I wasn't as interested in mathematics. I did OK, but at the earliest point I could stop doing math, I stopped. "

" If you took away all pain, if everyone lived forever, everything would be bland, flat and boring; there would be no reason for art, music, newspapers, love because we would all be in a mono state of happiness. "

" If we ever head down the American path of banning certain books or turning the editorial process into one of censorship, we will risk turning teens off books and sending them elsewhere - to their X-Boxes, for instance. To the Internet. And they won't ever come back to books. "

" I think we get too hung up on categories. Obviously, the book market has to categorise things, and it makes it easier for a reader to go into a bookshop and choose, but as a writer, it helps to get rid of all of that and imagine you are a storyteller around a campfire. "

" To make 'depression' synonymous with 'dangerous' is as bad as saying 'Muslim' is synonymous with 'terrorist.' "

" Teenagers are in some ways the best readers because their imaginations haven't been narrowed down by boring things like jobs and the realities of money and capitalism. "

" It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch. "

" However much in the foreground depression feels, you are separate to it. This is going to sound cheesy, but I'd say you are the sky. A cloud comes and dominates the sky. But the sky is still the sky. Depression tells you everything is going to get worse, but that's a symptom. Don't give depression power - constantly discredit it. "

" Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them. "

" If you sell the film rights to your book, it doesn't mean there will be a film. I have sold the rights to five books and had zero films made. Take the money and be thankful. "

" Depressives have led countries, won wars, flown rockets to the moon, made great music. Don't let depression stop you employing someone, and never let it cause you to judge them. Depression is not a person. Like any other illness, it is something that happens to a person. It shouldn't define them. "

" Depression is an illness. It is not a ticket to genius. It is not an interesting personality quirk. It is horrible and all-consuming and really hurts. "

" Writing can be fun. I think the challenge is to convey interesting things in accessible ways, and that's what I aim to do in books. "

" Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads to understanding. I wouldn't be a writer without depression. "