China Mieville Quotes

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China Mieville

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 6, 1972

I don't like allegory.

China Mieville

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

China Mieville

In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.

China Mieville

A lot of geeks are pale, bespectacled, wear dark clothing and don't get out much - the stereotype exists because it is very often true. I could pass for a non-geek but it would be inaccurate.

China Mieville

I'll tell you, I've never particularly been a 'Trek' person. I feel about 'Trek' the way one feels about known, vaguely liked, but rather distant members of one's family.

China Mieville

'Kraken' is a very undisciplined book. That's a gamble. If it doesn't come off, it's disastrous. But there are pleasures, I think, to a meandering lack of discipline that you can't get the other way, and vice versa.

China Mieville

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

China Mieville

I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

China Mieville

I think the role of science fiction is not at all to prophesy. I think it is to tell interesting, vivid, strange stories that at their best are dreamlike intense versions and visions of today.

China Mieville

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

China Mieville

I like the idea of trying to write a book in every genre.

China Mieville

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

China Mieville

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

China Mieville

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

China Mieville

I love monsters.

China Mieville

I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.

China Mieville

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

China Mieville

I always felt sorry for the sidekick as a kid. They never got their due and it left a very bad taste in the mouth - they are defined by a subordinate relationship to someone else. I always felt like a bit of sidekick when I was a kid and it didn't feel fair.

China Mieville

Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing.

China Mieville

In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with 'Dungeons and Dragons,' so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.

China Mieville