Quotes from Connie Willis

I am a Colorado native, and, no, I did not vote for the anti-gay amendment or the same-sex marriage ban, and I am not a member of a militia.

Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.

I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty.

I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction.

To do something for someone or something you loved-England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history-wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.

Perhaps that's how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.

I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.

No," I said finally. "Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?" "1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.

Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.

If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be responsive to their patrons. This means having dozens of copies of The Bridges of Madison County and Danielle Steele, and a consequent shortage of shelf space, to cope with which librarians have taken to purging books that haven't been checked out lately.

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.

Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason, Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie. You're forgetting the Little Prince, Polly reminded him. Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act, snapped Sir Godfrey.

Finch picked up one of the ancient fax-mags and brought it over to me. I don't need anything to read, I said. I'll just sit here and eavesdrop along with you. I thought you might sit on the mag, he said. It's extremely difficult to get soot out of chintz.

What's Management up to? I whispered to Bennett. My guess is a new acronym, he whispered. Departmental Unification Management Business. He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. D.U.M.B.

I don't know who started the myth that sheep are fluffy and white. They were more the color of an old mop and just as matted with dirt.

That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.

He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door--to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?--would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn't possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too--in a place he didn't belong, serving in a war in which he hadn't enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance?