Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.

We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.

The reason I wanted to do 'The First Men in the Moon' was that there is something so challenging in the combination of space travel and the Edwardian period.

When I was fifteen, my father gave me a first edition copy of Ray Bradbury's magnificent work, 'The Martian Chronicles.' I had read other science fiction by noted authors, but this book was something else altogether.

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

When I grew up, I saw the moon landing, and I was fascinated watching them as a child, and that's what really turned me onto space and science fiction, and I started watching things like 'Lost In Space,' and that led me to 'Star Trek,' which was a major influence on my life.

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne.

I like to have books around to give me ideas-to get the verbal part of my brain to start working.

Each book first begins with a little idea.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

I don't go around thinking I'm Ray Bradbury all the time.

Books guided my life from high school, and the greatest, most interesting, most provocative, funniest, smartest people who ever lived in the last 200 or 300 years wrote those books. I would fall in love with Victor Hugo and read not just 'Les Miserables,' but 'Bug-Jargal' and 'The Toilers of the Sea' and so forth.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.

There were books all over the house, and I was always told that I could write and that it was something good to do. So when I finally did it, it wasn't so strange or bizarre.

Without science fiction, without the influence these books have had on me over the years, I'm not sure I would care much about reading or writing today.

I grew up reading - and loving - stories by Andre Norton. I admired and idolised her from afar. Her stories helped shape my own internal world.

I was inspired by the men who walked on the moon. It really was my inspiration, I think, you know, as a kid of 9 years old - I know I'm dating myself, but - I thought, 'What a cool job!'

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

I discovered fantasy and science fiction when I was about 10, and read nothing else for about three years. I ran out of all the books that there were to read in the library. I was keen on reading stuff that took me to other places.