Quotes About Inspiration

Rigorous extrapolation, a gosh-wow love of gadgets, and mystical adventures in strange and mysterious places; every major stream in speculative fiction today can be traced back to authors who were writing before the publishing categories existed. From among the readers in the twenties and thirties who loved any or all of these authors arose the first generation of science fiction writers, who knew themselves to be continuing in a trail that had been blazed by giants.

The novelty and freshness you'll bring to the field won't come from the new ideas you think up. Truly new ideas are rare, and usually turn out to be variations on old themes anyway. No, your freshness will come from the way you think, from the person you are; it will inevitably show up in your writing, provided you don't mask it with heavy-handed formulas or clichés.

I believe, when it comes to storytelling ... that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn't planned. It can't be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn't a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.

Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

Orson Scott Card

I can't do a weekly column," Valentine said. "I don't even have a monthly period yet.

talent. Potential. Great potential

cuando mi mirada baja, mi corazón se alza.»

Orson Scott Card

If there is no awe, there is no audience.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

Take one idea that you've been struggling with, combine it with a completely unrelated idea that you've also been working on, and see what comes out of the effort to reconcile both ideas into one coherent story.

The story is nothing like what you first thought it would be. But so what? It's better - richer, deeper, truer - than the original idea. The idea did its work: it got you thinking. After that, if you feel bound to stick to it no matter what, that idea becomes a ball and chain that you drag with you through the whole process.

It occurred to me then for the first time that the idea of the story is nothing compared to the importance of knowing how to find a character and a story to tell around that idea.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.