Michael Chabon Quotes

I read a great deal of science fiction with consummate pleasure between, say, the ages of 12 and 16. Then I got away from it. In my mid- to late 20s, I started trying to write it.

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.

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 hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

I love science fiction when it's well-done. I don't like campy stuff. I don't like stuff that's too fantastical.

Like many authors, I caught the writing bug during my teenage years. I don't remember the exact day or year, but I remember that reading S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' sparked my interest in writing.

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction.

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

Poul Anderson's 'The High Crusade' may have had a greater impact on my development as a writer than any other book I ever read.

When I was a teenager, I got into SF, quite heavily, and that too has had a major impact on my writing.

In a sense, fantasy is a freer play of the imagination. You can achieve exactly the situation you want with less groundwork, less of a need to fill in all of the background. For science fiction, I would use a lot of sources to set up, for instance, what a being from another planet would be like.

Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.

I've always loved massive worlds, whether in fantasy or science fiction. I like the idea of making my own rules as well as utilizing everything that I love or inspires me. It's very freeing to know you can write a story that can be as big as your own imagination.

The reality is that much of the stuff you see in film, television, comics, and children's cartoons got its start inside the inspired, disruptive halls of science-fiction and fantasy literature.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

I do not read SF as much as I used to. It's too much like a busman's holiday.

I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.

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

I loved writing 'Two Brothers' more than anything else I have written. It's the first book I've written that I've always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights.

You can't write about fantasy without being ridiculous.

I was definitely meant to be a young adult author, and I love it - I'm here to stay!

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.