John Shirley Quotations

Bob [Sachs] is not the only client who wants a more finished look. People from out of state still see the 'Old West,' mining-camp look as new and exciting, but most don't want splinters [from unfinished wood] in their houses. The taste is more grown-up.

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and not really heavy handedly didactic.

I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it.

I'm trying to trick people into thinking about the unthinkable by using pop culture images.

I'm cursed with empathy. I'm also by nature way too opinionated.

Innocence could be considered a discrete state of mind.

Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine.

Misha's importance and distinctiveness are beginning to be noticed, there's beginning to be some kind of rip-tide here that will soon become a wave of recognition for a book that the world is beginning to catch up to... We weren't ready before. We'd better be ready now. Because it's the 21st century, any minute now, and that means that Misha's time has come. In more ways than one.

I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill.