I live a life very similar to my characters in that I live a full-blown summer fantasy from June to September. I go to the beach and work there every day.
When I invite people over to my apartment, they usually don’t like it because the music I play confuses the crap out of them – I’m making people listen to the ‘Final Fantasy’ soundtrack, and they’re like, ‘Why is this happening? Let’s just leave and find somebody who wants us to have fun and not teach us about something.’
I read a lot of the ‘Pern books’ growing up – basically up through ‘All the Weyrs of Pern,’ maybe a couple after that. As far as formative dragon influences are concerned, she’s probably one of the top ones; I know I read other fantasy novels that had them, but none particularly stick in mind.
The Company of Wolves doesn’t belong in any category, so it’s difficult to prepare an audience for it. It’s not a horror film, it’s not a fantasy film, it’s not a children’s film – so what is it?
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it – mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction – I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.
I read a lot of fantasy as a kid. I read ‘The Hobbit’ and all of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ books, but I also read a lot of realism like ‘The Outsiders.’
I manage to read about one book a month, all fantasy these days.
I think ‘World of Warcraft’ shows that people today still like a good fantasy hack and slash game. I always thought that a lot of computer fantasy games leapt into complex party-based play somewhat prematurely.
When I write my books, actually, I’m known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.
I’ve always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I’ve even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.
That’s when we decided to stop in ’66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn’t. I joined in ’62, and we’d finished touring in ’66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other… and create any fantasy that came out of anybody’s brain.
Is that romantic fantasy real? Um, after kids, no. Take the kids away, I don’t know. Depends.
Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don’t have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.
Film buffs who don’t live in Hollywood have a fantasy about what it’s like to be a director. Movies and the people who make movies have such glamour associated with them. But the truth is, it’s not like that. It’s very different. It’s hard work.
I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticize me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.
I usually do one con a year as a GoH and try to make the World Fantasy Convention for business purposes. Last year I went to a worldcon for the first time in two decades. I may go again this year.
‘Temeraire’ is a terrific meld of two genres that I particularly love – fantasy and historical epic.
I’ve spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that’s only the starting point.
I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better – as in the ‘Chronicles Of Narnia,’ ‘The Wizard Of Oz,’ ‘The Phantom Tollbooth,’ the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ cartoon on Saturday morning in the ’80s.
I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They’re fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It’s an odd mix of fantasy and reality.
Daytime has been successful all these years because it caters to a very real need in the audience – to see something that’s not nighttime fantasy. People watch daytime because it’s like their lives.
Rose was sexy. It was my fantasy about her. She accomplished so much and came from so little in terms of a background that would have prepared her for the world, let alone the world of entertainment.
Hats are the epitome of Englishness, and a royal wedding is the penultimate moment for a hat designer. I’m Irish, but I am a royalist and I believe in fantasy.
‘Luther’ is raw and brutal like ‘Game Of Thrones,’ but it’s coincidence. If I’m drawn to anything, it would be the writing. Choosing a project is an organic process where I’m taken in by the character and storyline, not the genre, whether fantasy or gritty and raw.
To be honest, if I was going to have any kind of fantasy, be it left-wing or otherwise, it wouldn’t involve Margaret Thatcher.
At Burning Man, the audience is the show: the boundaries between stage and public overlap and melt. Every form of self-expression, every fantasy… everything has a place. It’s kind of a utopia, and everyone who sets foot in it is so impressed that they do their best to respect it and keep it alive.
It is curious to note how fragile the memory is, even for the important times in one’s life. This is, moreover, what explains the fortunate fantasy of history.
I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.
If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well – and children and young adults won’t suffer anything else.
I had some fears as a kid, but I was also relatively fearless. Maybe that’s a result of living half the time in reality and the other half in fantasy.
I get so tired of people saying, ‘Oh, you only make fantasy films and this and that’, and I’m like, ‘Well no, fantasy is reality’, that’s what Lewis Carroll showed in his work.
An Olympic gold medal is something that almost seems like a fantasy. Yes, of course I want it, since I was a little kid, before I even knew what the World Cup tour was.
Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.
I watched a lot of American TV, all those repeats of ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Fantasy Island,’ ‘M*A*S*H,’ ‘Lost in Space.’ All that stuff was the fodder of my childhood.
How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.
My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I’m writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.
You know, I wanted to get married, and so I – but I, you know, I realize no matter what you want, it’s kind of a fantasy.
I like going back in time and writing historical fantasy. I use some real historical characters as a background to give depth to the fantasy. And I throw my fictional characters into the midst of this, and, so far, it has turned out interesting.
One of my teachers says the sound you hear in the center of the universe is laughter. I don’t know if it’s true, but if you do something and 30 years later it still produces laughter, that’s a fantasy you can’t make up.
All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it.
I think every fantasy reader secretly believes they know how magic works.
Stop doing things that waste time. Don’t replace time with your family or things that you need to do. I needed to put together two fantasy teams this weekend because that’s something I enjoy, but I did stop playing Nintendo Wii for hours on end.
Fantasy isn’t something I put into the pictures; I don’t try and inject them with a sense of play. But it’s about being an honest photographer; a photograph is as much of a mirror of the photographer as it is the subject.
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
I like westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels, thrillers, and I try to avoid the word ‘genre’ altogether. A good book is a good book.
I associate heavy metal with fantasy because of the tremendous power that the music delivers.
I’ve always loved science fiction, fantasy, manga, comic books; so I guess, to some degree, those things influence my personal idea of what looks nice, which definitely isn’t everyone else’s.
In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.
I like fantasy.
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
I had a friend, and we always used to pretend to be twins. We had this fantasy about going to Hollywood together. We were about four.
As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.
So many people think that if you’re writing fantasy, it means you can just make everything up as you go. Want to add a dragon? Add a dragon! Want some magic? Throw it in. But the thing is, regardless of whether you’re dealing with realism or fantasy, every world has rules. Make sure to establish a natural order.
