Michael Pryor Quotes

I've always had a slightly overactive imagination.

When people find out that I've written 208 novels, they ask, 'How did you think of all that?' Well, I answer, 'How do you not think of it?' I see a gum wrapper on the ground, and I think, 'Oh, a Russian spy probably dropped that.' I just think like that, and those thoughts go through my mind constantly.

I think the role of science fiction is not at all to prophesy. I think it is to tell interesting, vivid, strange stories that at their best are dreamlike intense versions and visions of today.

There are very few people who are creative and imaginative. Therefore, fiction is difficult for people to embrace.

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

My daughter has a vivid imagination, and so does my son.

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

I have a very strong imagination and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.

What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things I made up in my head so other people could see them.

Imagination makes us shape better stories, sure, but it also allows us to multiply possibilities.

We're a very imaginative species; we're very good at creating fictions.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

To me, cooking is man's natural activity. But I think writing is really hard. Certainly writing fiction is the hardest thing I've ever done.

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

Fantasy and science fiction are where my brain lives.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point.

When everything does seem out of control, writing fiction is a way I can order that chaos and restore some sort of meaning. I like the playful aspect of writing fiction. You know how it is when we are kids and we make up our worlds: You be this guy, and I am going to be this guy, and we are going to go slay dragons.

The characters emerge from my rather twisted mind. That's another enjoyable part of the job making stuff up.

Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars.

I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.