Lynn Flewelling Quotes

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

I really can't write fantasy. I cannot invent a world which does not exist. And I can't read fantasy either. As soon as I realise I'm reading a book that hasn't got its roots in a reality I can comprehend, I switch off.

You can't write about fantasy without being ridiculous.

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

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.

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.

When writing fantastical literature, your biggest problem is getting your audience to believe the fantastical elements of your story.

I think I have a God complex, and I like moving mountains and writing stories that affect entire worlds, and it's a bit hard to do that in a contemporary setting because you have reality intruding. Whereas, when you set your own reality, you can make up your own rules and do whatever you like.

If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well - and children and young adults won't suffer anything else.

Fantasy enabled me to break the shackles and create a whole new level of 'the world is in danger' stakes.

Fantasy is a demanding genre.

You have so many sources to draw on when you're a fantasy writer.

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

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

My feeling is that writing Fantasy should be harder - not easier - than writing any other kind of fiction.

I think that my passion for writing fantasy began at about the same time as my passion for reading fantasy.

In creating the Harry Potter artwork, I try to bring a certain amount of realism and believability to the characters and setting, but still add an element of wonder and the unknown.

In all my books, I try to have a strong element of realism underlying the fantastic.

For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.

I think that the way of bringing realism into fantasy is to treat it as the commonplace.

Perhaps fantasy offers imaginative escapism more than other genres.

Generally, I think most of my writing tends to have some kind of magical element to it. That's the way I can access the emotional life of the character.

I am not into the unrealistic realm of magic realism where birds talk.

It's hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there's all these 'rules' I'm supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make me do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines.

I think of science fiction as being part of the great river of imaginative fiction that has flowed through English literature, probably for 400 or 500 years, well predating modern science.