Quotes About Exploration

Science fiction in particular is often assumed to be about the future, or about some abstract technological or philosophical idea, or just about 'adventure,' but writers can't build worlds out of nothing. We use bits and pieces of the real world to assemble our fictional ones.

I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.

And you can tell the writers who do it - Robert Stone, for example, who with each new novel is doing something new. I appreciate that in other writers.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.

When they do bring on new people, it's good for the show. It's like getting a new toy. The writers enjoy it because it's a whole new character that they can write for, one that they aren't used to writing for. They can try different things.

Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.

Sondheim writes the music and lyrics, and because he's so smart and goes so deep with his feelings, there's a lot to explore, get involved with and learn about.

What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up.

I believe that a writer learns from every story he writes, and when you try different things, you learn different lessons. Working with other writers, as in Hollywood or in a shared world series, will also strengthen your skills, by exposing you to new ways of seeing the work, and different approaches to certain creative challenges.

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.

With my writing, I can still play inside an enchanted castle or live inside an old fort. I can run from ghosts or ride dolphins any day of the week.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.