NORMAN SPINRAD

If I had parallel lives to pursue, I would also want one as a painter.

As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.

If it's not American, the French won't go see it.

In America, if you don't do a 100 million dollars, you've done nothing.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

I believe that interest in heroes is universal and eternal.

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.

I write in American slang.

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.

Is anything accidental?

It's trite to say that the world has gotten smaller in the age of globalization, but my travels have told me that it's wrong to think this means there is some kind of uniform world culture.

I never learned to read music.

I'm not gifted, but I'm not hopeless.

There are certain things that ordinary people have that celebrities don't have.

The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.

Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype.

I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

You can really do more than you think you can do.

When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money.

Chaos is the enemy of Order but the enemy of Chaos is also the enemy of Order

Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.

The opprobrium of assholes is a badge of honor.

The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out, and nobody wants to buy.

There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make sense: 'Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.'