“I just can't get with this idea that literature is a 12-step program. If someone wants to read a book to see… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“He had since forever been working on a book called Uncanny Blossom. When Leon had told him, Billy had said, “I had… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“The reading rooms were large and quiet. Their windows were filmed in dust and desiccated insects, and seemed to age the light… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“[…] detective novels are not novels of detection, still less of revelation, still less of solution. Those are all necessary, but not… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
“On the World Fantasy Award: The award is a bust of H.P. Lovecraft, a notable author but also notorious racist. Nnedi Okorafor,… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“This first book’s for everyone, though almost no one wants it or would know how to read it.” — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“There was one panicked moment. He picked a book from the wall, and the shapes inside, all the letters, were friends to… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
Kraken' is a very undisciplined book. That's a gamble. If it doesn't come off, it's disastrous. But there are pleasures, I think,… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
“the second book’s for readers, he said. But you can’t know when they’ll come, if they do. It’s the book for telling:… — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“It had become a chimney poking from a vertical universe of bookshelves. There was motion below her. There were people on the… — China Miéville 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
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
Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
What I always try to do in all my books is to make the stories such that if you don't agree with… — China Mieville Copy Share Image
I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book. — China Mieville Copy Share Image
“I certainly didn't mind possibly sending the reader to a dictionary once in a while, but I tried not to do it… — China Miéville 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
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
“When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking… — China Miéville 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
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.” — China Miéville Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“The poets and artists and philosophers, resistance activists, secret scouts and troublemakers, had become, as they must, soldiers.” — China Miéville Copy Share Image
