Arts & Literature
Page 5
- Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple…Real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with…. My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.
- I've been doing this professionally since I was 10. If entertainment years were dog years, man, I'd be like Gandhi. I'd be like 250 years old.
- In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it’s like to be strangers in a strange land. It’s not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don’t regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we’re not surprised when people don’t understand what we’re saying or what we think.
- I wouldn't even say that I'm a rapper. I'd say I'm more of a messenger than a rapper.
- Sometimes you read something and it’s just -- it doesn’t invite a reader….Sometimes you read something and it’s not saying, ‘oh come in, come in have a seat. I’m going to tell you what happened.’ Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational…and that takes effort.
- I think if you write humor, then people don’t - you know - they don’t give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I’m not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.
- I’m not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really…because we’re just not that different. So if you think, ‘Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can’t possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, ‘that happened to me!
- Censorship will not rid the world of exploitation.