Bruce Sterling Quotes

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

I have also testified repeatedly and published some articles in favor of Small Science.

I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.

I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.

I'm not writing a Ph.D. Dissertation.

Let the historians and the Ph.D. students work out their doctrines. I'm not interested in theories per se.

I consider myself a writer, foremost - a nonfiction writer.

The most important thing is to recognize that research is our seed corn. It's a national security priority. It's not just a way to have enough going on that graduate students can do their Ph.D.s and scientists can publish. We have to do research, or we'll fall behind the rest of the world.

Finally, assuming that many of those are fulfilled, which won't be easy in tight budget times, we're taking the supply side at the basic research level, because that's where government is absolutely fundamental.

Basic scientific research is scientific capital.

I usually dread writing non-fiction. I don't feel comfortable or confident writing essays and the like.

I see no difference between scientific exploration and human exploration.

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.

Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

The truth is that you - people are doing scientific research with fetal tissue and it's not as if - no, this is brand-new news. This is something funded by.

The myth of objectivity made nonfiction increasingly unread. In feature articles, we could be playful in the opening and clever in the end but in the middle it was back to the boring basics.

After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

"Endow scientific research and we shall know the truth, when and where it is possible to ascertain it;" but the counterblast is at hand: "To endow research is merely to encourage the research for endowment; the true man of science will not be held back by poverty, and if science is of use to us, it will pay for itself." Such are but a few samples of the conflict of opinion which we find raging around us.

The self-regulating mechanism of the market place cannot always be depended upon to produce adequate results in scientific research.

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.