Scott Westerfeld Quotes & Sayings

“I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.”

“Ninety percent of the research comes first. I mostly blunder around reading stuff and talking to smart people until an idea batters or oozes its way through to my narrative brain.”

“I have no problem with commenters stating strong opinions, except for my usual annoyance with people who don't agree with me.”

“Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.”

“I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.”

“I have no formal training as a writer at all, not even a single English class in college.”

“Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.”

“I used to be a pre-industrial writer: thousands of words in a spurt and then a few days off. But as I get older, I've switched to a mode best described as 'slow and steady wins the race.' Basically, I write during the same four hours every day, after breakfast and the all-important coffee, generally in the same room and wearing the same pajamas.”

“When the term 'machine gun' enters common parlance, the word 'machine' becomes much more sinister.”

“The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you'd never know just by dating.”