Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole. China Mieville More Quotes by China Mieville More Quotes From China Mieville I don't like allegory. China Mieville allegory While yes we can both agree the sudden recovery of this footage smells not a little, and that we appear to be bits of tinfoil-on-string to some malevolent government kitten, yes yes yes but, Borlu, however they've come by this evidence, this is the correct decision. China Mieville yes-we-cansmellrecovery Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati. China Mieville fantasyattentionfiction Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings. China Mieville octopusmonsterstwo I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real. China Mieville realselfthinking I'll tell you, I've never particularly been a Trek person. I feel about Trek the way one feels about known, vaguely liked, but rather distant members of one's family. China Mieville membersfeelsway To take the choice of another ... to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to ... for all we individuals to have ... our choices. China Mieville actions-have-consequencesmeanreality Socialism and SF are the two most fundamental influences in my life. China Mieville influencefundamentalstwo When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit. China Mieville couplewritingbook My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate. China Mieville hippienamesbeautiful So long as it fated, fate didn't care what it fated. China Mieville fatecarelong There are only so many ways to experience pain. There are an almost limitless number of ways to inflict it, but the pain itself, initially vividly distinct in all its specifications, becomes, inevitably, just pain. China Mieville painnumbersway A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes. China Mieville londoncitiesopposites London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness. China Mieville angleemptinesslondon You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong. China Mieville futuretwomean There is no knowing beyond that membrane, the meniscus of death. What can be seen from here is distorted, refracted. All we can know are those untrustworthy glimpses--that and rumour. The prattle. The dead gossip: it is the reverberation of that gossip against the surface tension of death that the better mediums hear. It is like listening to whispered secrets through a toilet door. It is a crude and muffled susurrus. China Mieville knowingdoorsdeath I always felt sorry for the sidekick as a kid. They never got their due and it left a very bad taste in the mouth - they are defined by a subordinate relationship to someone else. I always felt like a bit of sidekick when I was a kid and it didn't feel fair. China Mieville sidekickssorrykids 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, to a meandering lack of discipline that you can't get the other way, and vice versa. China Mieville krakenbookthinking Anything for gold and experience. China Mieville gold The dead are way more organized than the living. China Mieville organizedway