Top 33 Ann Leckie Quotes

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

One of the awesome things about being a writer is that I can research nearly anything – tea? Bubblegum? Ants? Neurology? Chocolate? Textile production? It doesn’t matter. It’s all productive work.

In non-fiction, I found John Gardner’s two writing books to be tremendously helpful.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

I can’t see potato chips being popular where there’s not land to grow potatoes in or where frying in lots of oil isn’t easy or convenient.

I do realize the impulse to classify people by the food and art they consume is strong – sometimes I have to remind myself not to do that.

The ability to live for five hundred years would be an incredible gift. But I greatly fear it would be a gift only for the wealthy – one that might greatly widen the gap between those with access and those without.

Does getting an award make you happy? When you imagine yourself at the ceremony, you’re always so eloquent and gracious. In reality, it’s kind of awkward.

My taste in both is pretty eclectic. I do encourage people to try new and different kinds of tea if they can – there are so many different sorts, and so many, flavored or not, and there’s bound to be something you like. The same with choral music, really.

I do think that narrative is very important – I think that we use narrative to organize the world around us, and so it does matter a lot what kinds of narratives we have in our inventories and which ones are reinforced so often and so strongly that we habitually reach for them without thinking.

‘Ancillary Sword‘ picked up the Locus and the BSFA, which surprised the heck out of me.

After about fourth grade, I do remember borrowing my mother‘s old portable Olivetti and typing stories out on the back of photocopies of journal articles.

I tend to edit some as I go – partly because one of the reasons I don’t outline much is that I don’t know what the next scene will be until I’ve actually written the previous scene.

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.

I don’t think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

I’m not going to pretend that I never fantasized about winning the Hugo. Or the Nebula, for that matter. I just never thought it was an actual real possibility.

I love science fiction, and one of the things I love about it is that it’s so very different. You can read stuff that’s just fast-paced adventure, and the characters are cardboard, but who cares, because they’re heroes, and we love it. And you can read stuff that’s really deep character, and everything in between.

The Internet really lets people connect that wouldn’t have in the past, and lets conversations happen and connections happen.

I’ve been a fan of Jack Vance since before I was in high school.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written ‘fanfic’ – stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I’ve written is incredible.

Writing books can be very individual – one might strike you as helpful that someone else found useless, or that you might not have appreciated at some other time in your life.

Singing together is something human beings just do, and there are hundreds of years worth of just European vocal music available to read and hear.

Fortunately or unfortunately, NaNoWriMo requires you to write at a breakneck pace, so I got used to just pushing on through.

I don’t really have guilty pleasures. I like what I like, and I don’t worry too much about whether it’s supposed to be cool or sophisticated or show that I have good or bad taste or whatever.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I’d work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I’d work on next, and then I’d panic.

The lessons of slushing and editing build up over time, and you’re not necessarily thinking about them while you’re working, but they’re in the back of your mind, probably influencing your choices.

If you can’t access it, all the resources in the universe won’t do you any good.

Science fiction is huge and varied, and there’s almost any sort of book or story you might imagine.

You write alone, but you write hoping that there will be readers who will connect with what you write, and it’s so wonderful and amazing – I can’t even tell you – when that actually happens.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding – the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.

I’d say my biggest influences are writers like Andre Norton and, particularly when it comes to the Radch, C.J. Cherryh.

I’ve been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun.