Robert J. Sawyer Quotes

I don't understand and don't enjoy sci-fi, and it's just that if people aren't real, and they don't live in a real and recognizable society, I don't understand what to do.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world.

TV is the best. I wish that's how life was.

I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds.

I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem strangely denuded. But to them, I guess it doesn't seem strange. And I guess that's their privilege. It isn't mine.

In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don't get it twisted: you still got to do some work.

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.

There are many films and TV shows I make where people find themselves in fantastical situations; as often as possible, their reactions to it are very normal.

I'm a fan of the sensibility of comics, and I love the escapism of them and the defining of good and evil. They're just so creative, too.

Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat.

'Star Wars' is very black and white, and honestly, I like it that way. But fantastical settings like that work best when the characters within them feel real. Real people have conflicts and make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes.

I love the idea of fictional worlds kind of all cohering in some way.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

In film as a medium, you're often given a baddie and a goodie and told what to think about them; it's usually a very definite point of view.

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.

I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.

Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness and love.

I love young adult fantasies. While I say that, I have not seen all of the Twilight and Harry Potter movies. But I've read all of the books, and I love them. I love them because I enjoy being transported to a different world and having my imagination challenged. That's a huge part of what we do as actors. We have to imagine ourselves in a different world. And when you are in a young adult fantasy, it challenges you in the best way.

I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have a fantasy. Everybody must have a fantasy.

Fiction is the most joyous, beautiful, sophisticated, wonderful thing in the world.

These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.