Kameron Hurley Quotes

Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.

One of the things I stress to those I meet, especially young people, is that we are the heroes of our own lives, and we can be the masters of our own stories.

While many alternate reality stories ask, ‘What might have been?’ parallel universe stories literalize the war between good and evil that plays inside each of us every day. It’s what makes this type of story so perfect for many fantasy tales: we’re all just a coin flip away from being entirely different people.

I understand that space travel and expansion is just as much about altering ourselves, our attitudes, our social structures, our very biology, as it is about altering the places we choose to live.

What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things I made up in my head so other people could see them.

Creating a future requires a profound and yes, unrealistic, vision of what is possible. But it is fantasy and wonder that drive technology and innovation.

Let’s just put it this way: if you think there’s a thing – anything – women didn’t do in the past, you’re wrong.

I think that there’s this idea – especially for male readers, but female readers as well, because we’re all indoctrinated, right? – where there’s this idea that if a woman is tough, it can only be in a way that is still sexy.

Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.

We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration.

Watching the progression and backlash against feminism even since 1970 will give you a serious case of whiplash.

I want to write books that keep people up at night, where they cry through the first forty pages and keep reading anyway.

Many people don’t even want to start something until they feel fairly confident that they will be a success at it. But me? I love to throw myself into things headfirst and fail all over the place.

My parents both worked full-time flipping burgers at the local fast-food joint, and my grandmother looked after us. English was her second language, so instead of books, I learned spoken French nursery rhymes and curse words.

What makes a book unique isn’t always about having one big grand new idea. It’s about combining many different ideas in new and interesting ways.

It’s easier to say people are crazy than to try to figure out why.

What history taught me is that societies are not static and that the straight line of progressive ideals – this thinking we have that a society will just magically become more egalitarian over time – is patently false.

I want to be constantly in awe of the possibilities of the universe.

As an introverted kid who lived in the middle of nowhere, my stories made up the whole of my social life. That meant that while other kids cultivated hobbies like skateboarding or playing the piano, I sat at home scribbling in notebooks.

I know a lot of writers who tell me they ‘always’ knew how to read. They can’t remember a time before reading. And those writers make me want to tear my hair out.

Your enemies love your failures, sure. But what they love even more is to see you brought so low by those failures that you never get up again. Sometimes enemies aren’t even external. Often, our biggest critic, our greatest enemy, is ourselves.

Historically, science-fiction and fantasy literature is no stranger to controversy, but it has learned how to adapt and endure.

I can’t change the preconceived notions a reader brings to a work, but I can do my best to be aware of, address, and subvert tropes and expectations that readers may have as best I can and hope I don’t screw it up too much.

I enjoy challenging myself in new and different ways.

Storytelling is a universal: every culture does it. There’s a reason our religious books aren’t simply a list of shall-and-shall-nots. Morals and teachings are contained in stories, which are studied, dissected, and passed down; we remember stories in a way we don’t remember lists of facts.

Pen names have always fascinated me, in part because I understand the professional and economic and even societal reasons to do so.

Writers of all things speculative have played in alternate and parallel worlds for a long time – everyone from Stephen King to Philip Pullman to Tanith Lee – and it’s an obsession that likely isn’t going away any time soon.

It was strange how you didn’t realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely.

Novel writing, like so many things in life, is an iterative process. You come at it again and again, working at it like you would a piece of pottery or a stone sculpture, chipping away the parts that don’t make sense, smoothing over the rough edges.

This is the biggest trick of the sort of thing I write: creating fun, powerful stories with tons of interesting stuff going socially and culturally that doesn’t overly confuse the reader.

I’m the sort of writer who likes to leave doors open for readers.

As for the best ’80s action movie, I’m going to be predictable here and say ‘Die Hard.’ I watch that movie at least twice a year. Perfect script.

I tried to be really nice and like the things other people liked and do the things other people were supposed to do, and what you find out is that they’re going to bully you anyway. And I thought, ‘You know what? If I’m going to get bullied anyway, I might as well get bullied for making a difference in the world.’

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of ‘Twilight Zone.’ My mother was obsessed with the show, as it was a staple of her childhood – and thus she made it one of ours, too.

I’ve told people before that I don’t want to be a part of a genre; I want to be my own genre. I want to create it.

What does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? …Stories tell us who we are. What we’re capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what’s important.

Human beings thrive on imagination and pushing boundaries and limitations. Imposing limits when we don’t actually have any true idea of what’s possible is like imposing a steel trap over the mind.

‘The Stars are Legion’ is part space opera, part thriller, about two warring families battling it out for control over a legion of organic starships.

Life was what you did with what was done to you.

Once readers and industry professionals have you pegged down as writing a particular type of book, they are less likely to try something new from you if they decided they didn’t like the first one.

We don’t fall in love with perfect people. We fall in love with complex ones.

Authors make stuff up. Let’s not pretend it’s any more magical than that.

Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.

I’ve always been interested in the politics of war. War is one of those things that, the longer I studied it, the more illogical it seemed.

Before I wrote ‘God’s War,’ I probably did eight years of research into the Middle East, Judaism, Islam, Catholicisim, and all sorts of fabulous other things.

I’m a naturally lazy person, and I live for a challenge.