Fictional Universes Quotes

I think 'Caprica' is a little out of left field, which is kind of what I love about it. It's a little different. The first couple of episodes are really about wrapping your head around this world. I love 'Grey's Anatomy,' but I think it's the same kind of concept: You just get lost in this world, and you believe what they're setting up.

Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.

People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort - and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular.

With Marvel and DC, you're working with their pre-established fictional universes and characters. At those places, you're working with characters who will outlive you and maybe your children and your childern's children. Batman will outlive me, Spider-Man will outlive me, the Avengers will outlive me, and so it goes.

My formative years were all about 'Star Wars' - the first three, not the last crap, obviously. I understood 'Star Trek' but it was too caricatured for me.

There is a tendency for the New Gods to work best as guest stars.

What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.

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 think of 'Monsters, Inc.' as existing in the same space as Carl Frederickson from 'Up,' or whatever, you know? They seem like completely different universes to me.

I have found that the person with a sense of story built in from childhood is in better shape than one who has not had stories . . One knows what stories can do, how they can make up worlds and transpose existence into these worlds. . . .One learns that worlds are made by words and not only by hammers and wires.

'Star Wars,' 'Doctor Who,' 'Forgotten Realms,' even 'Firefly' and 'The X-Files' have shared world novels and other media. I can't help but notice these settings have large shelf space in bookstores, so their publishers and authors are getting something right.

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

Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid.

Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons.

There are a lot of things you do in a supernatural universe that can toe the line and cross the line.

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.