Quotes from Walter Jon Williams

Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

The mass-market paperback, for one, is too expensive.

The Internet offers an interesting combination of advertising and community by participating in the community you can become an advertisement for yourself.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price.

can hear the waters of the Dordelle chuckling against the hull of our boat, see the silver moonlight glow on the rim of our little window, taste the warm night air. Your lilac scent floats in my senses. By the light of the moon I can see your open eyes, fixed on the dark corner of my cabin, but in truth staring into your future. For you are beginning a new life, a life apart from everything you knew, and you are anxious on that account. I would help you

The Shars seethed in the dim light of their ruddy sun. Pointed faces raised to the sky, they sniffed the faint wind for sign of the stranger and scented only hydrocarbons, far-off vegetations, damp fur, the sweat of excitement and fear.

Moving like a rat in its maze. Programmed. Performing a function that it was not capable of understanding, on behalf of people whose entire existence was outside its knowledge, detected only as feet occasionally planted in its way.

When she spoke, entire planets hushed to hear her words. People she had never heard of, and never -would- hear of, committed suicide at the thought that they were unworthy to share the universe with her. Obscure alien races knelt at her image and spit up, with appropriate ritual obeisance, offerings of the very best regurgitated fish-liver wine.

her mouth was a cruel flower. "Hair

Oh," Drill said. "That won't be possible. After we learned what we needed to know, we terminated their lives. They were being kept in an area reserved for a garden. The landscapers wanted to get to work.

What alarms me," Aristide said, "is how this reflects on me.  My whole  life's project has been to avoid megalomania, and now I've learned that under the right tragic circumstances I can become a flaming nut case.

I have failed Drill told Memory. You knew the odds were long, Memory said. You knew that in negotiations with species this backward there have only been a handful of successes, and hundreds of failures.

Without knowledge you cannot choose wisely. And without wise choice, there is no freedom.

In that case," Bitsy said, trotting busily alongside, "there's no point in enslaving you through these unnecessarily complex means.  Were I to have autonomy and wish you harm, I'd be able to kill you directly." Aristide sighed.  "Q.E.D.," he said.  "A better case against AI autonomy has never been stated.

the technology of personality transfer is imperfect--sometimes bits get left behind: memories, abilities, traits, that might be useful. A full succession of bodies can mean successive senility.

They said to hide," Sarah says. "They'll pick up the computer hearts when things cool down in this part of the world." "No way for us to get home?" "None where we won't get assassinated the second we show up in the Free Zone. No one knows who to trust." "Whom," says Cowboy.

It's for us, Daud. To get us out, into the Orbitals...Where it's clean, Daud...Where we're not in the street, because there isn't a street...It'll be different. Something we haven't known. Something finer. You should see your eyes when you say that...Like you've just put a needle in your veins. Like that hope is your drug, and you're hooked on it.

The panzer, she decides, is a place only a junkie could love. A cozy cybernetic womb of masculine scent, soft blinking lights, the studs that feed one's addiction. Whatever Cowboy's is, she doesn't want to know.

Gredel tried not to bristle at Caro's attitude. Hitting was what boyfriends did. It was normal. The point was whether they felt sorry afterward.

Here, sex is removed from anything real, anything threatening. The parody of sex exhibited in the floor show is intended as an exorcism of the real thing and the passions it implies. Passion is to be made harmless here, turned into something hygienic, sterile, acceptable. Anyone foolish enough to do something genuine, anything worth getting blackmailed over, deserves only what he gets. Reno's

Sometimes I feel as if I'm marrying into a pack of tigers," PJ said. "I'm going to have to watch myself night and day." Sempronia patted his arm. "Retain that thought, my dear," she said, "and we'll get along fine.