Harold Crick: You just said ten seconds ago, you wouldn't help me. Professor Jules Hilbert: It's been a very revealing ten seconds.
Penny Escher: And I suppose you smoked all these cigarettes? Kay Eiffel: No, they came pre-smoked. Penny Escher: Yeah, they said you were funny.
Harold Crick: [crying] You're asking me to knowingly face my death? Professor Jules Hilbert: Yes. Harold Crick: Really? Professor Jules Hilbert: Yes.
Ana Pascal: I won't be paying, Mr. Crick. No matter how big the percent. Harold Crick: No, I know. But the percent determines how big your cell is.
Harold Crick: You keep your files like this? Ana Pascal: No, actually I'm quite fastidious. I put them in this box just to screw with you.
Ana Pascal: Mr. Crick, it was a really awful day. I know, I made sure of it. So pick up the cookie, dip it in the milk, and eat it.
Penny Escher: Man in tweed? Kay Eiffel: There's nothing wrong with him, he just likes looking at sick people. Penny Escher: Oddly spoken with disdain.
As I read more and more fairy tales as an adult, I found massive collusion between their 'subjects' and those in my fiction: childhood, nature, sexuality, transformation. I realized that it wasn't by accident that I was drawn to their narrative struc...
My books deliberately provide no answers or messages. I'm drilled in the habit of objectivity and also aware that the steady drip of fiction has more power than facts to shape opinion, so I handle it with caution.
Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.
Oh, I'm nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I'm nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I'm working on right now. It's a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it's going to be fun.
Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.
The first science fiction show on television was 'Tales Of Tomorrow' using scripts from the radio show 'X-1' which used stories from 'Galaxy Magazine' as its source material.
You do a drama, and you are limited by the rules of reality, and in science fiction, you create your own reality. Some people find that daunting; I find it challenging.
As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.
I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.
The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation.
Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that...
That certainly is one approach to take. My own is to acknowledge the inner child and try to work with my first fascination with science fiction. I have tried to build on its idea content and narrative drive rather than to discard them.
Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of the Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune, too.
I have always loved science fiction. One of my favorite shows is 'Star Trek.' I like the trips, where it drops my mind off, because they give you a premise and all of a sudden, you say, 'Oh!' and I'm fascinated by it.
