Paolo Bacigalupi Quotes & Sayings

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Mahlia knew the many voices of war from her father's chant. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It was one of those things everyone had an opinion about - that it was what you had when you didn't have anything else, that family was always there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of those words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and think they could get away with it. Family wasn't any more reliable than marriages or friendships or blood-sworn crew, and maybe less. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It is a precise thing, a scripted act as deliberate as Jo No Mai, each move choreographed, a worship of scarcity. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Everything's bad, until you find something worse. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren't your typical sci-fi subjects, but it's really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what's right. — Paolo Bacigalupi

If we don't have the right words in our vocabularies, we can't even see the things that are right in front of our faces. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Water sluices away soap and grime, even some of the shame comes with it. If she were to scrub for a thousand years she would not be clean, but she is too tired to care and she has grown accustomed to scars she cannot scour away. The sweat, the alcohol, the humid salt of semen and degradation, these she can cleanse. It is enough. She is too tired to scrub harder. Too hot and too tired, always.
At the end of her rinsing, she is happy to find a little water left in the bucket. She dips one ladleful and drinks it, gulping. And then in a wasteful, unrestrained gesture, she upends the bucket over her head in one glorious cathartic rush. In that moment, between the touch of the water, and the splash as it pools around her toes, she is clean. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The main reason I want someone to read a story of mine is so they can enjoy it and feel like they got something interesting out of it. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I don't put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction - looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That's a science fictional tool. — Paolo Bacigalupi

A desert's a stupid place to put a river. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I think inherently, a little bit, I'm a bit of a pleaser, and I want people to like me and be nice, and to not ruffle feathers and just make everybody happy and stuff. It's a personality flaw. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You cannot bargain with me. My heart is the clock. Find medicine before it ticks dry, and buy your friend's life. Fail and his corpse is all you will find here. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Mahlia just waited. She was good at that. When you were a castoff, it didn't do any good trying to talk to people, but sometimes, if you just kind of waited them out, people would get uncomfortable and feel like they had to do something. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The more you read about and immerse in a culture, the more it comes alive, and the more textured and nuanced and detailed and unstereotypable it becomes. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Lock it away," the half-man whispered. "You feel, after. Not now. Now you are a soldier. Now you do your duty for your pack. If you break, your Mouse will die, and you with him. Feel, after. Not now. — Paolo Bacigalupi

They'd blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they'd still blame you. — Paolo Bacigalupi

A wise human would have an understanding of the supply chain and how the pieces fit together. But it's against our nature to think about it. — Paolo Bacigalupi

She was too smart for his own good. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You think you are some fine predator? A swamp panther or coywolv?" He pretended to inspect her. "Where are your teeth and claws, girl?" He bared his teeth. "Where is your bite? — Paolo Bacigalupi

Mouse took an idle whack at some kudzu as he passed, but his face was serious. "Hell, I don't know. Why do you care? That was right after our farm burned. They got everyone. Mom and Dad. Simon. Shane got recruited. I saw that. They shot Simon because he was too little, but they took Shane." He knocked aside more kudzu. "Maybe I was hoping they'd just shoot me and get it over with. I was so sick of hiding and scavenging. I think I wanted the bullet. — Paolo Bacigalupi

If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely fucked ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around." He — Paolo Bacigalupi

Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Tool glanced over his shoulder, looking to see if the girl might have changed her mind, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the land. The Drowned Cities ate its children. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It is at times like these that Jaidee's heart breaks. Only once when he was in the muay thai ring was he afraid. But many times when he has worked, he has been terrified. Fear is part of him. Fear is part of the Ministry. What else but fear could close borders, burn towns, slaughter fifty thousand chickens and inter them wholesale under clean dirt and a thick powdering of lye? — Paolo Bacigalupi

Economies are embedded inside ecosystems. Companies dependent on tourism, for example, are affected by low rainfall - there's less snow for skiers, and forest fires are more intense. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Her father would return from China. He'd come back with all his soldiers. He'd pick her up in his strong arms and say that he'd never meant to leave, that he hadn't meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who'd ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Their yellow eyes seemed to hold ancient knowledge, as if their memories of want and drought and survival were so much more than Maria's. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia's fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I write at a standing desk, which has helped me be much more productive and solved some back problems, but mostly all my quirky habits have to do with procrastination and avoidance rather than with work. I'm slowly trying to stamp those out. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Men are loyal when you lead from the front. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Doctor Mahfouz was always yammering on about how everyone had humanity in them. From Mahlia's experience, the doctor was sliding high, but now, as she looked at this sergeant named Ocho, she wondered if there was some bit of softness in this hard scarred boy that she might be able to work. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I didn't think of myself as writing 'cli-fi,' but I'll take the label. I'll take any label that makes someone think they might be interested in my stories. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You get worked up about what's right and wrong, but that shit's only in your head. Rules are what the big dogs say they are. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Her whispering lips brushed his ear.
She was praying. Soft begging words to Ganesha and the Buddha, to Kali-Mary Mercy and the Christian God...she was praying to anything at all, begging the Fates to let her walk from the shadow of death. Pleas spilled from her lips, a desperate trickle. She was broken, soon to die, but still the words slipped out in a steady whisper. Tum Karuna ke saagar Tum palankarta hail Mary full of grace Ajahn Chan Bodhisattva, release me from suffering...
He drew away. Her fingers slipped from his cheek like orchid petals falling. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free. — Paolo Bacigalupi

When somebody keeps telling you, 'This book is amazing,' you sort of have this pleasing instinct to say, 'Oh, let me make you happy again; let me do that trick again.' — Paolo Bacigalupi

Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Life is exponential. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You're afraid to gamble even when you're already dead — Paolo Bacigalupi

There were stories in sweat. — Paolo Bacigalupi

We knew it was all going to go to hell, and we just stood by and watched it happen anyway. There ought to be a prize for that kind of stupidity. — 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

I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. — Paolo Bacigalupi

We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. — Paolo Bacigalupi

We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind. — Paolo Bacigalupi

When you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft passed by. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave? — Paolo Bacigalupi

Belief." He snorted. "I could kiss a thousand crosses. Fucking belief. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Start by loving, instead of needing. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Death is not defeat, Tool told himself. We all die. Every one of us. Rip and Blade and Fear and all the rest. We all die. So what if you are the last? You were designed to be destroyed. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Suicide is not something I owe you or yours. — Paolo Bacigalupi

What have you got on Case that makes you so untouchable?" Braxton asked.
"She trusts me."
Braxton laughed, disbelieving, as Angel put the injunctions back in order.
Angel said, "People like you write everything down because you know everyone is a liar. It's how you lawyers do." He slapped Braxton in the chest with the legal documents, grinning. "And that's why Case trusts me and treats you like a dog - you're the one who writes things down. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn't spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Down an alley a washing woman has set out laundry in pans near the rubble of an old high-rise. Another is washing her body, carefully scrubbing under her sarong, its fabric clinging to her skin. Children run naked through the dirt, jumping over bits of broken concrete that were laid down more than a hundred years ago in the old Expansion. Far down the street the levees rise, holding back the sea. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It's still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we'd be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We'd be rich and they'd be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They're all full of it. Nothing balances out. — Paolo Bacigalupi

We waste all our money throwing dice, trying to get close to Luck, trying to get the big win ... To help us find something we can keep for ourselves. — Paolo Bacigalupi

All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice. — Paolo Bacigalupi

She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations. Perhaps they burned the town because of you, or perhaps they did it because they disliked the whiskey. Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons. The one thing I am certain of is that neither you nor I did this burning." Tool reached down and turned Mahlia's gaze to meet his own. "Do not seek to own what others have done. — Paolo Bacigalupi

No one else could see all the bodies she'd left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I think that we live in a highly specialized, technologically advanced society. Highly developed societies tend to have very remote understandings about what underlies our prosperity. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Language is how we hack other people's brains. It's how we make them see things the way we want them to see them. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I think there are narratives going on all the time that we think of as tangential - up until they turn out to be deciding factors in our lives. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It's the first rule of bureaucracy: any message worth sending is worth sending in triplicate. — Paolo Bacigalupi

We're so few in comparison to the past, where did all the souls go? — Paolo Bacigalupi

We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it. — Paolo Bacigalupi

No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people's livestock. Other people's lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn't matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead. — Paolo Bacigalupi

There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. — Paolo Bacigalupi

When I read, I'm either reading to learn, or I'm reading to switch off. — Paolo Bacigalupi

That is the nature of our beasts and plagues. They are not dumb machines to be driven about. They have their own needs and hungers. Their own evolutionary demands. They must mutate and adapt, and so you will never be done with me, and when I am gone, what will you do then? We have released demons upon the world, and your walls are only as good as my intellect. Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be? — Paolo Bacigalupi

The surfeit of bad trends pushes me to set my stories in worlds which are often diminished versions of our own present. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Crew up, Nailer!" Lucky Girl shouted. "You think I'm going to pull your ass up here like a damn swank? — Paolo Bacigalupi

When we talk about dystopias, especially in young adult fiction, a lot of them are essentially science fictional futures. They aren't necessarily tied to the traditional concept of dystopia. And so in that space, my impression is that kids love reading about weird, wild, adventurous places, and dystopia fits that bill. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you'd ever left behind riding on your shoulders. — Paolo Bacigalupi

All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly.
How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You will die."
"I guess. I don't know." She shook her head, trying to pick through her feelings. "I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away. If someone didn't put a bullet in my head, I was winning. I was still breathing, right?" She looked at the blackened land around her, feeling tired and sad and alone. "But now I'm thinking it ain't like that. Now I'm thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you're dead anyway. Don't matter if you're still walking and talking, they weigh you down. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Lucy woke to the sound of rain. A benediction, gently pattering. For the first time in more than a year, her body relaxed. The release of tension was so sudden that for a moment she felt as if she were filled with helium. Weightless. All her sadness and horror sloughed off her frame like the skin of a snake, too confining and gritted and dry to contain her any longer, and she was rising. She was new and clean and lighter than air, and she sobbed with the release of it. And then she woke fully, and it wasn't rain caressing the windows of her home but dust, and the weight of her life came crushing down upon her once again. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm definitely writing my fears. It's almost therapeutic to at least voice a terror, to say, 'I'm worried that Lake Powell looks low and Lake Mead looks even lower.' — Paolo Bacigalupi

As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Is this how you will die? Is this what you were meant for? To simply be bled out like a pig?
A spark of rage flickers, an antidote to despair.
Will you not even try to survive? Did the scientists make you too stupid even to consider fighting for your own life?
Emiko closes her eyes and prays to Mizuko Jizo Bodhisattva, and then the bakeneko cheshire spirit for good measure. She takes a breath, and then with all her strength she slams her hand against the knife. The blade slices past her neck, a searing line.
"Arai wa?!" the man shouts.
Emiko shoves hard against him and ducks under his flailing knife. Behind her, she hears a grunt and thud as she bolts for the street. She doesn't look back. She plunges into the street, not caring that she shows herself as a windup, not caring that in running she will burn up and die. She runs, determined only to escape the demon behind her. She will burn, but she will not die passive like some pig led to slaughter. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Some people had to bleed so other people could drink. Simple as that. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Jesus walked on water, so maybe he makes aquifers, too. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Grahamites." She makes a face. "So concerned with niche and nature. So focused on their Noah's ark, after the flood has already happened."
Anderson thinks of Hagg, sweating and distressed at the destruction caused by ivory beetle. "If they could, they'd keep us all on our own continents."
"It is impossible, I think. People like to expand. To fill new niches. — Paolo Bacigalupi

As a kid, I always liked reading stories where I had a power-projection fantasy. I wanted to be inside of a story where I had power and influence, was going to rise to power, was going to somehow influence my society. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade. — Paolo Bacigalupi