Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Own

Genetics

" Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences - large scale engineering, neuroscience. "

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

" The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Ideas

People

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. "

" I'm less crazy and unhappy when I'm writing. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" When somebody keeps telling you, 'This book is amazing,' you sort of have this pleasing instinct to say, 'Oh, let me make you happy again; let me do that trick again.' "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Book

Amazing

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Look

Data

" 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. "