A Quote by Shaun Tan

As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury, and I think his stories did more to shape me as a storyteller than anybody else - even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.
From his style, you’d think Jason Brannon was the dark double of Ray Bradbury. He cares more about character and realism than most writers I’ve read and his plots flow like well-orchestrated music. Indeed, Brannon’s writing has a classical feel, reminiscent of the best traditional work in the genre, even when he’s going for gut-wrenching terror and torture in-extremis.
I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they have a way of putting them into words that makes them sensational.
I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.
Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer.
Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.
Although he moved away from the Midwest for good at the age of thirteen, Ray Bradbury is a prairie writer. The prairie is in his voice, and it is his moral compass. It is his years spent in Waukegan, Illinois - later rechristened by Ray as 'Green Town' in many books and stories - that forever shaped him.
I was familiar with Lovecraft, I also was familiar with his history as a person. So I had read his stories but I wasn't bananas like I think that a lot of people get bananas. I was like, they're good and I can definitely see the influences - but I can definitely read them and see the parts where you're being racist right there in your own stories.
I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.
Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.
I like all sorts of things, not necessarily just Victorian. Even though I tend to read a lot of Victorian novels, I like a lot of contemporary stuff.
Why did I like simpler songs? Just times change. This is one of the repeated things I hear: even though people will read different kinds of books, they don't read Lord of the Rings when they're 30 even though they did at 15.
Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.
Kafka thought his stories were hilarious. We don't necessarily have that reaction to them, but he certainly laughed his head off every time he read them out loud.
The work is the work. The work is not me. I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller.
Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.
I think Billy Ray has a lot of great stories up his sleeve. I've heard a lot of his plans for the show, should it go forward, and I think there's a lot in store for people, if it's given a chance.
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