Jeff VanderMeer Quotes - Page 3

I think I got a complete picture of what the lives of scientists are like. My father is of the opinion that if scientists are allowed to follow their nose, eventually it results in something. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. What I came out of it with, in a non-cynical way, was that the scientific process is as messy as anything else. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just the way it is.

Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.

Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it

I do believe very much in the idea of unexpected or "convulsive" beauty - beauty in the service of liberty.

History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.

Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.

The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.

My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books. I've learned that the more I collaborate, like by having someone do a soundtrack to one of my books, the more I see my own work differently.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

I have always tended toward a lush prose style, but I take care to modulate it from story to story and to strip it down entirely when necessary.

You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.

You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.

The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris-or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.

I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.

When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.

An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.