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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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.' "

" When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" By nature I'm sort of an introvert. "

" 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. "

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

" The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Young

Fantasy

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

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

Paolo Bacigalupi

Look

Data

" 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. "

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

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

" The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. "

" 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'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth. "

" 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'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? "

" 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. "