Quotes from Karen Traviss

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

Whether I build a character from the ground up or develop one, whether within my own copyright or in licensed work, I can step into that character's mind. It takes a kind of voluntary dissociation akin to method acting, military planning, marketing, or detective work: to think like the other guy and work out what he's going to do next.

A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

I'd probably play games obsessively if I didn't write, although I admit I don't read novels partly because I don't enjoy it, not just because it's the wrong side of the creator-consumer barrier for me. I'm a visual writer. I think in moving 3D images and write down what I observe.

I love being pushed out of my comfort zone.

Writing is like a rollercoaster ride for me, an adventure. I love exploring the world through playing people who are absolutely nothing like me.

Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action.

If you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position.

So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge.

Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla. (Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you'll be.) - Mandalorian saying

I don't know who the good guys are anymore. But I do know what the enemy is. It's the compromise of principles. You lose the war when you lose your principles. And the first principle is to look out for your comrades.

We're all going to die sometime, so you might as well die pushing the odds for something that matters.

If we don't stand up for others, who will be left to stand up for us?

Think of yourselves as a hand. Each of you is a finger, and without the others you're useless. Alone, a finger can't grasp, or control, or form a fist. You are nothing on your own, and everything together.

And nobody has the right to judge a soldier from the warmth and safety of their armchair.

If you're not prepared to do something in public, don't do it at all.

Scorch: "I think Sev might have an anger problem." Sev: "I think you have an intelligence problem.

It ain't what you say: it's how you say it.

We have an understanding. I don't laugh at his skirt, and he doesn't rip my head off." -Fi Skirata

It's okay to be scared as long as you use it.

Your boys okay?" "Tired, edgy, but giving it all they've got. One of 'em has sworn to get Vau, another is having a love affair with a woman he shouldn't even look at, I'm collecting waifs and strays like an animal shelter, and we nearly killed a treasury agent. But if I told you the really bad stuff, you'd think I have problems.

Vau: "We were having a philosophical discussion, as Mandalorians often do, and I asserted that the only demonstrable reality was individual consciousness, but he insisted on the existence of a priori moral values that transcended free will. So I hit him." Zey: "You think you're so witty." Vau: "No, I think you should stay out of Mando clan business.