A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.
Robert Sheckley
2
As far as the mechanics go, working with other people on received ideas was for me a very interesting technical problem. I can't say that any of my collaborations engaged my heart, but they engaged the craftsman in me.
Robert Sheckley
3
But science perhaps is very difficult without faith. Also there is no simple way of saying now we have science, we don't need faith anymore.
Robert Sheckley
4
I am very pleased and perhaps a little surprised also because I don't think one knows the extent of one's own work or the acceptance of it.
Robert Sheckley
5
I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.
Robert Sheckley
6
I don't much like to look back with the idea that I was doing it wrong then or I'm doing it wrong now.
Robert Sheckley
7
I knew I was doing something right because it was selling so I didn't want to interfere with it.
Robert Sheckley
8
I like to think that I have no single view nor any single situation that I think things arrive from. I try to give examples of what I think are interesting questions for me.
Robert Sheckley
9
I sell well now in Russia. I remember one signing in Russia some years ago where the bookstore had two strongmen to hold the crowds back.
Robert Sheckley
10
I think it can be quite impossible to think well of yourself, so I prefer not to think about that too much. But I am very pleased, obviously.
Robert Sheckley
11
I was forever reading outside of the field as well as in it.
Robert Sheckley
12
I was never able to write seriously about heroes because I was very aware that I was not one and that in my background there was not this heroic thing.
Robert Sheckley
13
I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is - a blessing or a curse, I don't know which.
Robert Sheckley
14
I'm not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.
Robert Sheckley
15
I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.
Robert Sheckley
16
It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven't written about Oregon yet, although I've been there 20 years - possibly I'm almost due.
Robert Sheckley
17
Once you find you can't walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.
Robert Sheckley
18
Science fiction is very healthy in its form.
Robert Sheckley
19
So I try to stick with the structure, make the sentences work, and not to follow one sentence of 114 words with another of the same length.
Robert Sheckley
20
The absurdist stuff wasn't terribly popular at the time I was doing it.
Robert Sheckley
21
The British audience was very important to me. I have always looked away from American to non-American audiences and so this was important.
Robert Sheckley
22
There is a great deal of cyberpunk that I admire, especially the work of William Gibson which I think is excellent. Somehow he speaks from his own heart and cyber punk is what comes out.
Robert Sheckley
23
There's no sense going crazy over this stuff. Short stories help me with that, since you can do a story in anywhere from one day to a week.
Robert Sheckley
