Robert Reed Quotes & Sayings

It has often been said that [ ... ] the Japanese [are] geniuses at taking foreign ideas and adding a unique finishing touch. — Robert Reed

2001: A Space Odyssey was a wonderful conundrum when I was a boy, with its giant concepts thrown across the giant screen at Indian Hills Theater. That movie woke me up in ways that I hadn't imagined, and I went searching for book versions of the same drug. — Robert Reed

In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way. — Robert Reed

Things that are impossible usually take time. — Robert Reed

This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing ... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef. — Robert Reed

The monkey said, "Bad. Bad, shitty bad. — Robert Reed

Science fiction is really a rather tiny business compared with its giant cousin, which is fantasy. — Robert Reed

To improve as a player you need to not only know how you plan to win, but ... how might your opponent disrupt your plan. — Robert Reed

I don't believe people let things slide away. It's the nature of the universe that everything dissolves into oblivion and by every route possible, but human beings invest a lot of cleverness trying to cling to past events, real or imagined. And because we can't succeed, we get angry and frustrated and feel guilty. Except the Buddhists. — Robert Reed

I've always thought of science fiction as being, at some level, a 19th-century business. — Robert Reed

In Reagan's world, we have to be geared up to fight a foe that could barely feed its own people. And meanwhile, our real troubles have to be mocked. Global warming. Nuclear proliferation. Corrupt governments supported by my tax dollars and everyone's complacency. — Robert Reed

A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest. — Robert Reed

I can't point to a moment or incident that made me see that this business, this putting down words on paper, was what I would do for the rest of my lucid life. But apparently, that is my calling. — Robert Reed

I would like to say that I have software that allows me to model worlds to a high degree of scientific plausibility. I'd also like to be six foot two and fifteen years into my reign as Emperor of Europa. The simple truth is that past the character's name and a long history of making my own body cover distances, I did very little in the way of targeted research. — Robert Reed

A community is a small group working together. Community scales by adding groups, and building connections between them, not enlarging them. — Robert Reed

Perfection is insignificant. Is boring. — Robert Reed

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there. — Robert Reed

I'm the only member of SFWA in Nebraska, but I don't pine away for the companionship of other science fiction writers. I [go] to very few conventions. I'm quite willing to be that eccentric who has a very odd job, quite happy to be the only science fiction writer in town. — Robert Reed

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next. — Robert Reed

How many of us readers say this quote and mean it. "If I knew what I know now life would be different" ... — Robert Reed

For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week. — Robert Reed

I'm astonished how little fright I have of my own imagination. It really does baffle me that I don't get more scared because I'm capable of thinking up things that are so awful. On any given day I can imagine the worst. — Robert Reed

A person can spend every day of his life finding examples of our spectacular oddness, and if that's what he likes to do, then his life is destined to be full and rich. — Robert Reed

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book. — Robert Reed

A community that learns together excels together. We need to form communities that learn together. — Robert Reed

I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse. — Robert Reed

The burden of intelligence: you can always imagine all those wonderful places where you can never belong. — Robert Reed

Even what seems stable and true skids upon a razor balanced upon another razor perched upon the thinnest, keenest slice of luck. — Robert Reed

With a whisper, Ash asked Shadow, "But why do you live this way? With him, in this kind of role?" In an Aaback fashion, the creature grinned. Then Shadow peered over the edge of the canyon, speaking to no one in particular when he explained, "He needs me so much. This is why." "As a servant?" "And as a friend, and a confidant." With a very human shrug, he asked Ash, "How could anyone survive even a single day, if he didn't feel as if he was, in some little great way, needed? — Robert Reed