A biography for Samantha Shannonhasn’t been written yet.
“I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.”
“I was not a rebellious teenager. I was a sit-in-your-room teenager.”
“Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.”
“I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.”
“I had lived in that part of London that used to be called Islington since I was eight. I attended a private school for girls, leaving at sixteen to work. That was in the year 2056. AS 127, if you use the Scion calendar.”
“It is a strange world, Oxford - quite claustrophobic. I was often glad I was only there for eight weeks at a time.”
“For me, just being published feels like success.”
“His dreamscape sent a tongue of fire across my flowers.”
“I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.”
“Words are everything. Words give wings even to those who have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair.”