A Quote by Paolo Bacigalupi

For pleasure, I'll read military sf, or Elmore Leonard capers, anything that's fast and fun. Otherwise, I mostly pick at books, without any clear focus. — © Paolo Bacigalupi
For pleasure, I'll read military sf, or Elmore Leonard capers, anything that's fast and fun. Otherwise, I mostly pick at books, without any clear focus.
I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie.
Anything can happen in SF. And the fact that nothing ever does happen in SF is only due to the poverty of our imaginations, we who write it or edit it or read it. But SF can in principle deal with anything.
I'm a big fan of Elmore Leonard, and I've read Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre and so on. But I'd never read a crime novel that made me feel emotional at the end.
Innocence is the way you really give fun to others, create the fun part of it. The fun is created only through innocence and innocence is the only way you can really emit also the fun. Imagine this world without any fun, what would happen? But people are very much confused between fun and the pleasure. The pleasure is nice to begin with and horrible to end with. But fun is a treasure. Anything that is full of fun you remember all your life.
There are few writers who, if they publish anything, I am going to buy it: Ian McEwan, Scott Turow, Pat Conroy - he was a buddy of mine and I always read his stuff. Also: Harlan Coben, Elmore Leonard, John Le Carre, but he's pushing ninety.
Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it tastes even better with capers not in it.
The first time I read a crime novel - I think it may have been an Elmore Leonard book - it took some time for me to realise how the genre worked. There were about 20 characters on the first page, and I wasn't used to this. I started to enjoy it when I saw that was how crime books worked.
I just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping...just little things.
I really try to understand what people are saying and answer as honestly as I can. But sometimes it's like they try to tie you into knots. That's why I mostly steer clear of the popular press. I try not to read . . . Well, I never read gossip press. I just read books. And I never switch on the TV any more.
I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.
The most important thing for any aspiring writer, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything.
I've read over 4,000 books in the last 20+ years. I don't know anybody who's read more books than I have. I read all the time. I read very, very fast. People say, "Larry, it's statistically impossible for you to have read that many books."
SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.
First, there are some of my readers who only read Hap and Leonard, not the other stuff, and some who don't read Hap and Leonard, but a large percentage are crossover readers. And yes, I did refuse to go to Vietnam and it looked like prison was in my future, but they sent me to the psychiatrist and he gave me a 1-Y, which is unfit for military service essentially.
As Elmore Leonard says, I write to find out what happens.
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