Quotes from Gardner Dozois

I've probably read more bad science fiction than anyone else alive. But I've also read more good science fiction than anyone else alive.

When I first started editing a 'Year's Best' volume in the '70s, the job was pretty straightforward - there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.

Funny how "I love you" never sounded the same in different languages. It lost or gained power. In English, it sounded so plain. In Spanish, it became a promise.

People who say what they think are never going to ambush you with long-fermented resentments, and obsessive people don't get bored. They know how to make their own fun.

It's about what humans need to be happy. Sure, we evolved to live in complex interdependent social groups, but before that, we were nomads, pursuing resource opportunities in an open, sparsely populated landscape. That means for some people, solitude and independence are primary values.

It was funny how you thought you remembered someone. You sketched their face boldly in your mind, but when you saw them again, you realized how far you were from their true likeness. Had he always been that height, for example? Had he moved the way he did, long strides as he reached the table? Had he smiled at her like that? Maybe she'd constructed false memories of him, fake angles.

Only narcissists and Heroes stood unwavering against the odds. Most rational people got a clue and found their bearings.

The universe ages, Earth loses its oceans, the human race is subjugated and turned into cultureless futureless slaves, but actors still count lines.

Magic predates Art. In fact, Art may have been invented as a tool to express Magic, to give Magic a practical means of execution—to make it work . So that if you go back far enough, artist and sorcerer are indistinguishable, on and the same—a claim that can still be made with a good deal of validity to this very day.

life was more like a game of Snakes and Ladders than a straight line.

Every single choice you make is micro-analyzed when you're a woman. When you're a man, you can fuck up as many times as you want. Nobody asked Mauricio Garcés why he made shit films. But then you get old and nobody cares. Nobody knows you, anymore.

the nights were dark and full of terrors

An experienced slush-pile reader doesn't need more than a few seconds to see if a story has potential. You don't need to eat all of a rotten egg to determine that it's rotten.

Even after all these years, finding a really first-rate story is still a thrill, one I want to share with others.

When I was a boy in Salem, Mass., in the 1950s, if you wanted to buy a book, you had to take a train to Boston. And when you got there, to a bookstore, there was no such thing as a science-fiction section.

Nice is such a toothless word. Do you want to have your gravestone say, 'Here lies Amelia. She was nice'? Come, come." "I suppose not.

Don't be afraid. Don't wait. Don't get caught. Just go. Go fast.

THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE IS THE HUMAN RACE

How much does it take to have a history as opposed to anecdotes? Is there a critical mass? We

Westerners demand authenticity even though they don't really want it. They cry out for meat without cruelty, war without casualties, thinness without hunger. But the Chinese don't mind artifice.

All my life I've tried to avoid pain, with indifferent success.

On the Human Plan JAY LAKE

words are merely loose gravel until glued together by the mortar of obscenity.

When I was learning the anthologist's trade many years ago, sitting at the knees—metaphorically speaking, at least—of veteran anthologists like Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, I was taught that you should always save your strongest and best story for last.