Fictional Exploration Quotes

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

Now, being a science fiction writer, when I see a natural principle, I wonder if it could fail.

I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.

Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.

Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own in order to investigate, by way of pleasurable thought-experiments, how things might be done differently.

I don't write historical novels but novels that wonder, 'And what if it happened in this way and not in this other one?'

The idea that we should write towards the unknown aspects of our experience was totally groundbreaking for me. It gave me the license I needed to try to write outside myself. This attitude has deeply informed my approach to fiction, emboldening me to write characters with voices or situations that are vastly different from my own.

When I did 'Battlestar Galactica' it was the first time I really understood science fiction. That was a very political drama, but set in spaceships so people didn't really take it seriously. But some really fascinating things were explored in that.

Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.