Neal Asher Quotes

I was a huge bookworm as a kid, and you could usually find me reading something with a dragon on its cover.

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.

Perhaps fantasy offers imaginative escapism more than other genres.

Fantasy was something I'd read as a child. And, in fact, my teachers despaired a little bit because I refused to give up Enid Blyton. Then I walked through the wardrobe with C. S. Lewis, and I don't think I actually have returned fully from the wardrobe. So, fantasy was something that was in my life from quite young.

I loved 'Pan's Labyrinth.' It transported me into another world. I like fantasy worlds; I love 'Lord of the Rings' as well, for that reason, because you really get to get out of reality and go somewhere else.

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.

I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry Potter' books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth.

Fantasy is a demanding genre.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I was a tremendous fan of the original Kenneth Grahame short story, 'The Reluctant Dragon.'

My interest in fantasy began pretty much when I started to read.

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition.

Ultimately, Lloyd Alexander's tales of Prydain were enough to make me come back and visit again and again, and each time, I laughed and I wept. Each time. No exceptions.

Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing.

Here's the thing, for me at least: this is a huge genre now. It wasn't always so. Not so many years ago, it wasn't so. There is a tremendous diversity in fantasy today.

As a kid, I loved any fantasy.

I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.

I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.

When I was a child I devoured every book I could get my hands on. I loved losing myself in colourful and dramatic stories - and my absolute favourite was 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.' Everything about it electrified me, and when I re-read Roald Dahl's books as an adult it surprised me.

If I'm made to pick one transcendent reading experience, then it was listening to Miss Sarzin as - if we'd been very, very good - she read the next chapter of 'The Hobbit' aloud to us.

I grew up reading a lot of fantasy/sci-fi. It was really all I read - anything from 'Dragonlance,' when I was 12, to 'The Wheel of Time' and Robert Jordan stuff, to George R.R. Martin, who did 'Game of Thrones.'

When I was a kid, I loved having a book in my hand. I still do. I wasn't a fast reader, but I was a steady reader. I read all of The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames books.

I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the 'Chronicles Of Narnia,' 'The Wizard Of Oz,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' the 'Dungeons & Dragons' cartoon on Saturday morning in the '80s.

I understand why society, especially American society, is gravitating toward fairy tales, given our economy. We've been exploring the world of witches and wizards for years. We've been exploring the world of vampires for years. Clearly the public - I mean, I feel like all of this was ushered in by 'Harry Potter' - in my own fannish beliefs.

I grew up reading a lot of fantasy/sci-fi.