Quote

I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.

William Gibson

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William Gibson
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 17
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Conway
South Carolina
William Ford Gibson
Writing
Lazy
Going
Began
Specificity
Things
Seemed
Shorthand
Unless
Visualize
Fiction
Imagining
Science
Lacking
Write
Visuals
Found
Visual

More quotes by William Gibson

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You needed a new pancreas. The one we bought for you frees you from a dangerous dependency.” “Thanks, but I was enjoying that dependency.
William Gibson
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Occasionally if I look back at something I've written I'll find one of those that I don't understand, but that's a bad thing - the unconscious has dealt me a bad hand.
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Authenticity doesn't mean much to me. I just want good, in the sense of well-designed, well-constructed, long-lasting garments. My interest in military clothing stems from that. It's not about macho, playing soldiers, anything militaristic. It's the functionality, the design-solutions, the durability. Likewise workwear.
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I was afraid to watch 'Blade Runner' in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better.
William Gibson
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The future is there, Cayce hears herself say, looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.
William Gibson
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A lot of the buildings [in Toronto] around Yonge and Bloor is the architectural equivalent of Kipper Ties and 8 collar points. It's ghastly and no amount of street-level retail glitz can lift it.
William Gibson
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I'm not the only one: witness Pokemon! They still keep coming up with this stuff that just rivets us in unexpected areas.
William Gibson
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I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.
William Gibson
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I'm interested in people who become culturally fluent. And when I meet young people I'm often amazed they don't quite seem to have a sense of where they're from. They're like the citizens of the airport.
William Gibson
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I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.
William Gibson
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I think the large part of the function of the Internet is it is archival. It's unreliable to the extent that word on the street is unreliable. It's no more unreliable than that. You can find the truth on the street if you work at it. I don't think of the Internet or the virtual as being inherently inferior to the so-called real.
William Gibson
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I very seldom compose anything in my head which later finds its way into text, except character names sometimes - I'm often very much inspired by things that I misunderstand.
William Gibson
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I'm a really good eavesdropper. I listen to what people say and remember all the buzzwords.
William Gibson
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I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.
William Gibson
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I've been through the whole western world, and it seems to me that there's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than food! There's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than there's been in the entire history of humanity! It's grotesque!
William Gibson
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I'm embarrassed if I think anyone knows exactly what I paid for something, or even where I got it. I want what I'm wearing to feel good on, wear well, and to be extremely functional.
William Gibson
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When I was first writing about Japan, it was at the peak of the Bubble. Bubble popped, but they kept on going. Japanese street style feeds American iconics back into America in somewhat the way English rock once fed American blues back into America.
William Gibson
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I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting. I actually tend to suspect that in real life, there have always been very strong female characters, but at certain stages of society, they've been asked to cool it.
William Gibson
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That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery.
William Gibson
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I suppose I do the Japanese because I just don't know China. Chinese popular culture has never evoked that instant of, Whoah! What's that? that I have with Japanese popular culture.
William Gibson