I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
“Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist.… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
When I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific imagesthings that have… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
“He said, You’ll write it not because there’s no possibility it’ll be found but because it costs too much to not write… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“I just can't get with this idea that literature is a 12-step program. If someone wants to read a book to see good people… — China Miéville Copy Share
“Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape,” — China Miéville Copy Share
“Either way, it is a curio of the moment that hard-left advocates of ‘all power to the soviets’ were delegated by a soviet opponent… — China Miéville Copy Share
It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think… — China Mieville Copy Share
“We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.” — China Miéville Copy Share
“almanacs, or what was left of them when those pages making incorrect predictions and offering unhelpful advice had been torn out.” — China Miéville Copy Share
“There are no telepaths in this universe, I think, but there are empathics, with languages so silent that they may as well be sharing… — China Miéville Copy Share
“The poets and artists and philosophers, resistance activists, secret scouts and troublemakers, had become, as they must, soldiers.” — China Miéville Copy Share
“The city’s a heart, I said, and in that a heart and a city were sutured into a third thing, a heartish city, and… — China Miéville Copy Share
“As he got older, Billy suspected, he would, Dicaprio-like, simply become like an increasingly wizened child.” — China Miéville Copy Share
