16 Harry Turtledove Quotes

Harry Turtledove quotes

1. Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

2. Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

3. I'm a social caterpillar. I am not a social butterfly

4. I can't not write. I'm obsessive-compulsive, and I know it.

1. Plausible development, building from what we know about what really did go on, and a whacking good story… Surrounded by Enemies delivers on both, big-time. So hold on to your hats, folks. You’re in for quite a ride.

2. I learned by reading an awful lot and by writing a half a million words of stuff nobody would do anything with except wrap old fish.

3. People were as they were, not not as he wished them to be.

4. I first tried a novel when I was 14. First finished one when I was 16. First started working on stuff that had a chance of being salable in my early 20s, then didn't write much fiction at all because I was in grad school.

5. You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.

6. I do first draft in longhand, which saves a lot of rewriting. I try to get a certain amount done each day. Don't always, but I try. Then I clean up in the rewrites.

7. A horsefly can't do a horse much real damage, but it can drive it wild anyhow.

8. People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.

9. You can write better about a place you've seen for yourself. You don't have to have been there - I've sure written about places I've never seen - but it does help.

10. “Caudell hadn't touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army's old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.”

11. “That anyone would want to be famous still mystified Colin. As TV had trained him to do, he associated the word with divorces and court appearances and rehab and jail time. He knew more than he wanted about all of those except rehab, and that was the one famous people blew off anyway.”

12. “For some idiot reason, the idea of going into the drink with a misspelled safety device weirded Bryce out.”