Paul Di Filippo Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“It's certainly a cliche to remark that a nonfiction book 'reads just like a novel,' but in the case of Jonathan Eig's 'The Birth of the Pill,' I have no other recourse, since his narrative is full of larger-than-life characters sharply limned and embarked on fascinating doings, their story told in sprightly visual fashion.”

“'James and the Giant Peach' magnificently starts out Dahl's career as a blithe and droll Bad Uncle corrupter and affirmer of youth. Its influence can be subsequently traced down the decades in everything from Maurice Sendak to Lemony Snicket to J. K. Rowling.”

“Jeff VanderMeer's fiction has always been entrancingly, engagingly, enthusiastically weird, a winning combination of mimesis and the fantastical that privileges neither component: perhaps the very definition of that mode categorized as the 'New Weird' and exemplified most famously by the groundbreaking work of China Mieville.”

“Just as our solar system has a certain idiosyncratic assortment of planets and moons, different from any neighboring system yet categorically equivalent, so each distinct period of human history might have special qualities and individuals, characteristics and events, yet still be essentially akin beneath the surface to all the others.”

“More than we sleep, play, or make love, we work. Yet despite - or perhaps because of - this dominant daily grind, much of our literature is biased toward other pursuits.”

“Neil Gaiman has reached a masterful stage in his writing where he deserves his own adjective, which could be extended to younger writers following in his wake: Gaimanesque. His work, while variegated, exhibits a unity of vision, voice, and tone that is unmistakable. A Gaiman story finds magic in the mundane and familiar touchstones in the outre.”

“Once anthropology and geology had opened up the pre-recordkeeping darkness of humanity's long, slow, sustained infancy as suitable grounds for speculation, writers began trying to imagine human existence as it must have been with only stone-age technology.”

“One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain's hypothetical take on current events several times a week.”

“Only a minority of science fiction dystopias attempt to plumb the real existential roots of oppression, the flaws in humanity's nature that undermine our best attempts at organizing ourselves into social units.”

“Originating with such figures as T. H. Huxley, who sought to bring Darwin's ideas to the masses, the popular science genre moved on to entertaining landmarks like Edwin Abbott Abbott's 'Flatland,' then accelerated into the twentieth century with inestimable work from such luminaries as George Gamow, Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner, and Carl Sagan.”