Ellen Datlow Quotes

The genres of the fantastic and the grotesque are far more interesting to me than most mnemonic fiction.

My natural tendency is to write about zombie bunnies, but one of my first writing teachers got incorporated into my writing superego, and I keep hearing his admonition to make things feel more real the weirder they get.

I tend toward the unnatural, sometimes with supernatural undertones or such.

I would try to write 'realistic' fiction, and someone would fly, or there would be a black hole full of demons or a girl who attracted frogs.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

As far as fiction goes, as far as everything from Dr. Seuss to Oscar Wilde to Bret Easton Ellis. Ray Bradbury. There's just tons of stuff that I love. Neil Gaiman!

That's one of my favorite things about 'Hemlock Grove' is that it's just unique and really just weird, and that's really what's happening with Miranda when she kind of gets thrown into the middle of this vampire-werewolf world.

Reading 'Search Sweet Country' is like reading a dream, and indeed, at times, it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto.

I just like magical, fantastical stuff. I don't really see it as surreal when I'm writing. It's just, I write, and then I have an idea, and usually, they're quite odd.

I don't look at stories in genres. A good story is a good story, no matter what planet it happens on, whether the characters are mice or human or whatever. That's how I look at it.

Science fiction writers aren't fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.

I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story.

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

I love anything that's sort of surreal and with fantasy.

I have a longing for fiction, to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as 'fiction' and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called 'nonfiction' strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.

To be honest, I wasn't a sci-fi geek at all. But I do love a good sci-fi film, especially one that can really take you away. And I read some reality-bending novels growing up, like stuff by Vonngeut, so I already had one part my brain open to the unnatural and unusual, and it's generally fun to venture into that world and film in it.

I've always been into 'fast-paced, don't bore 'em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.' You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.

I'm a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy - not so much horror because I get a bit scared.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

It was weird - writing is a stupid thing to do. I come up here in the morning to a pleasant room in the roof of my house and imagine I'm a black South American football superstar; then I have to imagine I'm a female pop celebrity who's pregnant. It's a completely mad way to spend your time.

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

I absolutely adore writing books with paranormal elements - and I love creating the often-complex worlds and/or plots that go along with those stories - but at the heart of all of that, you have the characters, and when you get down to the core of it, it's spending the time with the characters that is what I truly love.

I'm always aiming for some magic in films if I can find a mystical quality either in a song or in a moment or a character's intention.