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The surfeit of bad trends pushes me to set my stories in worlds which are often diminished versions of our own present.

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
Versions
Present
Often
Stories
Surfeit
World
Pushes
Diminished
Trends
Worlds

More quotes by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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An untrampled scorpion troubles no one.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Plenty of people say my guesses about a future drought in the western U.S. (where I live and grew up) are wrong, so I don't see why I won't be wrong in some people's eyes when I go set a story on foreign shores.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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A desert's a stupid place to put a river.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Environmental science is telling us a lot about our future and what it could look like, whether we're talking about global warming (the current poster child for the environment) or a loss of genetic diversity in our food supplies, or the effects of low-dose chemicals on human development.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.
Paolo Bacigalupi
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Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side.
Paolo Bacigalupi