Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I didn't think of myself as writing 'cli-fi,' but I'll take the label. I'll take any label that makes someone think they might be interested in my stories. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Related Quotes:

" The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren't your typical sci-fi subjects, but it's really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what's right. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" I think that we live in a highly specialized, technologically advanced society. Highly developed societies tend to have very remote understandings about what underlies our prosperity. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" I'm definitely writing my fears. It's almost therapeutic to at least voice a terror, to say, 'I'm worried that Lake Powell looks low and Lake Mead looks even lower.' "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" 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. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" 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

" I think inherently, a little bit, I'm a bit of a pleaser, and I want people to like me and be nice, and to not ruffle feathers and just make everybody happy and stuff. It's a personality flaw. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" Originally, 'The Windup Girl' started as a short story - a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn't work very well. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" I think that, when I think about the future that 'The Water Knife' represents, it's one where there's a lack of oversight, planning and organization. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" I know people who have gone into career death spins, and that's something you're always aware of as a writer. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" As a kid, I always liked reading stories where I had a power-projection fantasy. I wanted to be inside of a story where I had power and influence, was going to rise to power, was going to somehow influence my society. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" 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

" Everyone in China knows The Topics. The television stations and newspapers run the same state-generated stories all across the country, and the Chinese form their opinions based on these somewhat controlled sources. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" Economies are embedded inside ecosystems. Companies dependent on tourism, for example, are affected by low rainfall - there's less snow for skiers, and forest fires are more intense. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" The conclusion I came to was that even if I couldn't sell books, I still liked the process of writing. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

" 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

" 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

" I think the fact that we, as writers, don't engage with resource-level questions is a symptom of our society where we just don't know where our stuff comes from. "

Paolo Bacigalupi