Daniel Abraham Quotes (141 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

talking about http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/30792-daniel-abraham/page__st__60 his epic fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin
Context: For the moment, it's called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, that'll swap out for a better name. There are some things in the proposal that need to get smoothed out so that everyone's on board, but I think it'll happen.
It's a very different from the Long Price books. It looks and feels more like traditional epic fantasy -- quasi-Europe, ferinstance, and some dragons in the background, no 15-year gaps between books -- but the plot structure is packed with everything I think is cool. There are echoes I'm intentionally building in of from things as familiar as Firefly and The Count of Monte Cristo and as obscure as Tevis' Queen's Gambit and Reck-Malleczewen's Diary of a Man in Despair. And the magic system is all about faith and deception, which will be tricky and fun both.
What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16.

Reading , Joy

“I think that the soul of fantasy—or second-world fantasy at least—is our problematic relationship with nostalgia.”

Daniel Abraham

Context: I don't find fantasy to be more or less suited to philosophical questions than any other genre, really. I think that the soul of fantasy—or second-world fantasy at least—is our problematic relationship with nostalgia. The impulse to return to a golden age seems to be pretty close to the bone, at least in western cultures, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a human universal. For me, it's tied up with the experience of aging and the impulse to recapture youth. Epic fantasy, I think, takes its power from that. We create golden eras and either celebrate them or—more often—mourn their loss.

Interview with Peter Orullian http://orullian.com/writing/danielabraham_interview.html

World , Soul , Thinking , Nostalgia

“I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.”

Daniel Abraham

On his blog, talking about genre http://www.danielabraham.com/?p=160
Context: I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.
And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)

Thinking , Time , Success

Daniel Abraham Quotes

“I think there's a real tension between sophistication and accessibility.”

Daniel Abraham

interview with Locus Magazine, June 2008
Context: Writers are a basically insecure bunch. We are convinced that everything we do sucks, all the time. It's something you have to fight. The best way to make sure that your writing will never be particularly good is to use it for something besides telling the story. And I think there's a real tension between sophistication and accessibility.

Thinking

“I was listening to Tim Powers talking and he said he didn't want his villains just defeated, he wanted them humiliated and destroyed. And I thought: 'I don't. I want my villains to be understood and forgiven.”

Daniel Abraham

interview with Jack Womack in Orbit Books Podcast http://www.orbitbooks.net/2011/04/27/orbit-podcast-episode-3-with-daniel-abraham/

““Stop,” Holden said. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear any more of your stories about how being a cop makes you wiser and deeper and able to face the truth about humanity. As far as I can tell, all it did was break you. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Dresden and his Protogen buddies thought they could choose who lives and who dies. That sound familiar? And don’t tell me it’s different this time, because everyone says that, every time. And it’s not.””

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 43 (p. 437)

Truth , Time

“And now they were making music from the screams of the dying. Of the dead. The were dancing to it in the low-rent clubs. What it must be like, Miller thought, to be young and soulless.
But no. That wasn’t fair. Diogo was a good kid. He was just naive. The universe would take care of that, given a little time.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 44 (p. 445)

Music , Universe , Time , Dance

“He considered recording it. His suit would be able to make a simple visual file and stream the data out in real time. But no. This was his moment. His and Julia’s. The rest of humanity could guess what it had been like if they cared.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 48 (p. 488)

Time

“Too many dots,” Miller said. “Not enough lines.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 10 (p. 109)

“That man could take a visitation from God with thirty underdressed angels announcing that sex was okay after all and make it seem vaguely depressing.”

Daniel Abraham

Epilogue (p. 560)
Leviathan Wakes (2011)

God , Sex , Angels

“When, Miller wondered, does someone stop being human? There had to be a moment, some decision that you made and before it, you were one person, and after it, someone else…If he’d seen it in someone else—Muss, Havelock, Sematimba—he wouldn’t have taken more than a minute to realize they’d gone off the rails. Since it was him, he had taken longer to notice. But Holden was right. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost himself.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 28 (p. 284)

Decision , Personality

“He couldn’t fix the cancer of war, couldn’t even slow down the spread, but at least he could admit it was happening.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 16 (p. 164)

War

“It was as easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 50 (p. 504)

““We regret the necessity of this action,” she said to everyone everywhere. “But in the cause of freedom, there can be no compromise.”
That’s what it’s come to, Miller thought, rubbing a hand across his chin. Pogroms after all. Cut off just a hundred more heads, just a thousand more heads, just ten thousand more heads, and then we’ll be free.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 36 (p. 364)

Freedom

“This was the kind of man who’d killed Julie, Miller thought. Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 28 (p. 281)

Stupidity , Soul , Sense

“Holden decided that he was okay with not feeling any remorse for them. The moral complexity of the situation had grown past his ability to process it, so he just relaxed in the warm glow of victory instead.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 41 (p. 412)

Feeling , Past , Victory

“Never knew if you had any luck left unless you pushed it.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 18 (p. 187)

“Annie, If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I'd have stayed on Earth with my husband.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Abaddon's Gate, Chapter 5 (p. 52)

(2013)

Indifference

“If Fred couldn’t build himself a peace treaty, the OPA would never win against the discipline and unity of an inner planet navy. But they would also never lose. War without end.
Well, what was history if not that?
And how would having the stars change anything?”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 46 (p. 467)

War , Peace , History , Star

“The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 18 (p. 184)

Beauty

“It was a real book—onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 14 (p. 150)

Books , Idea

“There was life out there. They had proof of it now. And the proof came in the shape of a weapon, so what did that tell him?”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 38 (p. 379)

Life

“The enlisted guys will be okay, but the officers get the sense of humor trained out of ’em.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 11 (p. 113)

Guy , Sense , Training

“Miller was staring at him like an entomologist trying to figure out exactly where the pin went.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 45 (p. 457)

“He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 50 (p. 504)

Strong

““See, this is why I can’t ever be in command,” she said.
“Don’t like making tough calls with incomplete information?”
“More I’m not suicidally irresponsible,” she replied.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 17 (pp. 178-179)

Suicide

“Say what you will about organized crime, at least it’s organized.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 2 (p. 20)

“She didn’t care. Not caring was how she got through the day.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 16 (p. 170)

“If Miller had ever been called upon to describe her, the phrase deceptive coloration would have figured in.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 2 (p. 21)

Color

“All bluster, no balls.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 22 (p. 228)

“That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed. The calculus of all human power was changing, and the models she used to make sense of it shifted with them, and she had to keep reminding herself that the past was a different place. She didn’t live there anymore.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Epilogue (p. 576)

Sense , Past , Making love , Change

“But, like so many things in life, when you come to the spot where you’re supposed to do the rituals, you do them.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 48 (p. 491)

Life

“They fought and worked and devised intricate plans to buy more time. Basia had no doubt that they’d work just as hard to keep each other alive for even a few more minutes. It wasn’t something he’d ever had to think about before. But it did seem to be a microcosm of everything in life. No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 47 (p. 481)

Life , Thinking , Time

“From where he was, the fear had stopped being an emotion and turned into an environment.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 45 (p. 458)

Fear

“There were a lot of holes in that logic that he carefully avoided thinking about.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 39 (p. 400)

Thinking

“It was less fun being the chosen one and prophet when the gods were violent and capricious and their spokesman was insane and powerless.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 34 (p. 345)

God

“Human brains needed an answer, even if they had to make up something they knew was bullshit.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 22 (p. 219)

Making love

“We’re the ones who followed the rules here. We came with science teams and a hard dome. We hired them to build our landing platform, and they killed us. We’re the good guys here.”

Daniel Abraham

“And the moral high ground is a lovely place,” Marwick said, as if he were agreeing. “It won’t stop a missile, though.”
Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 15 (p. 156)

Science , Guy

“Everything was an artifact of its function. That’s what made evolution so gorgeous.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 6 (p. 64)