Amanda

“Traditional American handicraft was employed in the wall’s construction, and so most of it had collapsed.”
― Jack Womack, Ambient

“I think the power of books is that - that they teach us to care about others. It's a power that gives people courage and also supports them in turn. [. . .] Empathy - that's the power of books.”
― Sōsuke Natsukawa, The Cat Who Saved Books

“Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.”
― M. John Harrison

“Not long after we started working for him I asked Bernard if he thought Thatcher was evil,'I said. 'He said it was like asking what jazz is.”
― Jack Womack, Heathern