Quotes by Paul Di Filippo

About Paul Di Filippo:

Paul Di Filippo is an American science fiction writer. He is a regular reviewer for print magazines Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Science Fiction Eye, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Interzone, and Nova Express, as well as online at Science Fiction Weekly. He is a member of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop. Along with Michael Bishop, Di Filippo has published a series of novels under the pseudonym Philip Lawson.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been ...

Paul Di Filippo

It was as unsatisfying as a handjob from someone wearing an oven mitt.

Paul Di Filippo

Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.

Paul Di Filippo

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.

Paul Di Filippo

The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.

Paul Di Filippo

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

Paul Di Filippo

The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and ...

Paul Di Filippo

Sometimes magnificent visual art takes root in the humblest of soils. Advertisements painted on old barns, tattoos, fruit crate labels, hot rod embellishments - all these media and many other non-galleried forms have hosted and fostered esthetic deli...

Paul Di Filippo

Blending consensus historical events and personages with imaginary occult forces is a strong recipe for counterfactual storytelling goodness that combines the best of two worlds: resonant history with wild-eyed fantasy.

Paul Di Filippo

Only a minority of science fiction dystopias attempt to plumb the real existential roots of oppression, the flaws in humanity's nature that undermine our best attempts at organizing ourselves into social units.

Paul Di Filippo

The sentient beast has long been a staple of fantasy fiction and its antecedents in myth and folktale.

Paul Di Filippo

It's certainly a cliche to remark that a nonfiction book 'reads just like a novel,' but in the case of Jonathan Eig's 'The Birth of the Pill,' I have no other recourse, since his narrative is full of larger-than-life characters sharply limned and emb...

Paul Di Filippo

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances of their creation, and even apart from the intentions of their creator.

Paul Di Filippo

I suspect that authors who start their careers writing for an adult audience - and who eventually produce a young adult novel or two - are more common than authors who begin by writing for young adults and who then gravitate toward composing somethin...

Paul Di Filippo

'James and the Giant Peach' magnificently starts out Dahl's career as a blithe and droll Bad Uncle corrupter and affirmer of youth. Its influence can be subsequently traced down the decades in everything from Maurice Sendak to Lemony Snicket to J. K....

Paul Di Filippo

Certainly the highest posthumous praise that can be conferred upon any writer is the assertion that his or her writing permanently altered the literary landscape for the better, opening new textual doors and engaging new readers. That the author's oe...

Paul Di Filippo

Everyone can guess what 'Corn Flakes' tastes like, even if you've never had them. But what, pray tell, does 'High School Musical' or 'Spider-Man' cereal possibly taste like? In this late era, we have reached the ultimate deracination between product ...

Paul Di Filippo

For every reader and writer of steampunk fiction, there are probably hundreds or thousands of other activists who gleefully embrace some non-written manifestation of the steampunk ethos.

Paul Di Filippo

It is truly bracing and instructive to contemplate the End Times - at least at safe remove, in the pages of fiction - especially as the world beyond our hearths churns and convulses unknowably, yet perhaps just short of ultimate disaster.

Paul Di Filippo

Of the birth of subgenres, there is no end. They arise like bubbles full of miraculous hopes and potentials from the Planckian foam of the canon, inspiring writers new and established alike.

Paul Di Filippo

Author Bio

  • NamePaul Di Filippo
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornOctober 29, 1954
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist