Matthew Reilly Quotes

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Fantasy is a demanding genre.

I think I have a God complex, and I like moving mountains and writing stories that affect entire worlds, and it's a bit hard to do that in a contemporary setting because you have reality intruding. Whereas, when you set your own reality, you can make up your own rules and do whatever you like.

You can't write about fantasy without being ridiculous.

Fantasy and science fiction are where my brain lives.

Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing.

I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.

I think it's fun to play with worlds that you can add a lot of your own imagination to. With 'True Blood,' you're not limited by anything, there are just leaps and bounds of the imagination you can take with these characters.

I read and write speculative fiction because I want to go someplace really different.

But to me, 'Worlds' is meant as kind of an appreciation of fiction and stories and escapism and fantasy.

You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel.

With my writing, I can still play inside an enchanted castle or live inside an old fort. I can run from ghosts or ride dolphins any day of the week.

In creating the Harry Potter artwork, I try to bring a certain amount of realism and believability to the characters and setting, but still add an element of wonder and the unknown.

For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.

My interest in fantasy began pretty much when I started to read.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

And I guess I'm a kid at heart in that when I go for entertainment, I want to be totally transported. I want to go somewhere else; I want to encounter different things, different beings, different universes. And so I love that aspect of being able to play those things in both 'True Blood' and in 'American Horror Story.'

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.

Pretty much anything you care to imagine can happen in a fantasy, which in turn means you can really crank up the intensity of the tale you're telling.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

I always felt that sci-fi and fantasy were my thing. Bit of a geek, I'm afraid. But I like creating worlds, and I felt it was a genre that gave me more freedom. It just seemed like I belonged there.

I played lots of fantasy games. I would create these worlds, and I would believe in them.

'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination, writing these stories of murder.

I'm going to get hated for saying this, but honestly, fantasy is easy to write because you can do anything. It's like when Raymond Chandler brings in a bloke with a gun when he's stuck - in fantasy, up pops a wizard, and off we go.