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The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

Paolo Bacigalupi

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Paolo Bacigalupi
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: August 6
Environmentalist
Fantasy Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Paonia
Colorado
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi
Ever
Ended
Ghost
Shoulders
Behinds
Behind
Everyone
Ghosts
Left
Surviving
Problem
Riding

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Nothing so mystical. Human beings hunger for killing, that is all. It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth.
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An untrampled scorpion troubles no one.
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Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.
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She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.
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Knowledge is always two-edged. For every benefit, there is hazard. For every good, evil.
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We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind.
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Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.
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She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.
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Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind.
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I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.
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Men are loyal when you lead from the front.
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The more you read about and immerse in a culture, the more it comes alive, and the more textured and nuanced and detailed and unstereotypable it becomes.
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What I'm hoping to do though is to ground my extrapolations in specificity, and to make sure that the story I tell is deliberately and honestly told.
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Take three different Thai writers and ask them to extrapolate their county's future, and one hopes that you'll get three very different - but all deeply honest - versions.
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It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.
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I used to love reading, but since I've started writing, it's harder for me to immerse, because I spend so much time looking at how the story is structured and trying to see what the author is doing behind the curtain.
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I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.
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But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.
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Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn't spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit.
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When I read, I'm either reading to learn, or I'm reading to switch off.
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