Robert J. Sawyer

“A writer needs to write, period. He or she can't wait for the muse, shouldn't need peace and quiet, and isn't entitled to perfect conditions or the perfect spot.”

“We're wired somehow to want to be part of something bigger. And we quest to understand what our role is.”

“Print science fiction writers often do consulting for government bodies.”

“Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.”

“¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨”

“I'm a rationalist. And I can see no evidence for a benevolent and interventionist creator.”

“Regrettably, with '2001' having a title that had a year in it, science fiction essentially set itself up in the public's imagination as saying, 'Here's what you get if you wait to that year.' Well, we all waited till that year, and we didn't get anything at all like that.”

“If you like 'The Nature of Things,' or if you like 'Quirks and Quarks' you'll certainly like Lee Smolin's writing, and 'Time Reborn' is his latest nonfiction book, and it's an absolutely compelling read. It's worth the time.”

“In the best atheist sense of the word, I feel blessed.”

“People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort - and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular.”

“A short story is the shortest distance between two points; a novel is the scenic route.”

“There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Of those four, the first three were all published principally in science-fiction magazines. They were preaching to the converted.”

“One of the standard story-generating engines for science fiction is to take something we normally think of as metaphoric and treat it as if it were literal.”

“One gets a bit picky after having the success of something like 'FlashForward!'”

“Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.”

“No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?”

“An agnostic is someone who believes the nature of the Divine is unknowable... and in that sense, I'm willing to subscribe to being an agnostic.”

“If you look at the United States, most of the country is pretty much uninhabited.”

“Science fiction has always used metaphors and disguises, talking about alien civilizations or the future.”

“I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.”