Quote

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

China Mieville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

China Mieville
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: September 6
Academic
Anthropologist
Blogger
Fantasy Author
Literary Critic
Novelist
Political Scientist
Politician
Writer
Norwich
Norfolk
China Tom Miéville
China Mieville
China Tom Mieville
Fiction
Monster
Wrong
Giant
Enjoy
Searching
Science
Enjoying
Wells
Giants
Allegorical
Well
Metaphor
Squid
Nothing
Monsters
Squids
Like
Fantasy
Literal

More quotes by China Mieville

Image
I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.
China Mieville
Image
A sickly little smile grew and died on his mouth like a fungus.
China Mieville
Image
Geeks run the world. Condoleezza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in the presence of a geek.
China Mieville
Image
One of the things that I love so much about fantasy and science fiction is that the weirdness that it creates is always at its best completely its own end and also metaphorically and symbolically laden.
China Mieville
Image
Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.
China Mieville
Image
For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true.
China Mieville
Image
There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings.
China Mieville
Image
My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.
China Mieville
Image
I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.
China Mieville
Image
When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.
China Mieville
Image
I like the idea of trying to write a book in every genre.
China Mieville
Image
Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.
China Mieville
Image
A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.
China Mieville
Image
Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.
China Mieville
Image
It had not been a long journey, but the memory of it filled her like an infection. She had felt tethered by time to the city behind her, so that the minutes stretched out taut as she moved away, and slowed the farther she got, dragging out her little voyage.
China Mieville
Image
The reason that I like SF and fantasy and horror is that to me it's the pulp wing of surrealism. That's the aesthetic of undermining and creative alienation that I really go for.
China Mieville
Image
The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.
China Mieville
Image
My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.
China Mieville
Image
I love it when people want to interpret my books.
China Mieville
Image
Remember the movements that don't look like moving.
China Mieville