The Monsters We Deserve Quotes

“Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world-- the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley-- ...I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially because now it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What's Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“...people burn books, and that they ban books is, in a way, a good sign. It's a good sign because it means books have power. When people burn books, it's because they're afraid of what's inside them...”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“That is the power of the book. Immortality, for better, or for worse. It is majestic, in its way, this immortality. And power. Once a story is started, once a lie is told, it is very difficult to un-tell it . . .”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“If what we make comes back to haunt us , to define us and alter us, well, then, hadn't we better be very careful what we create?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“The binary colour of words on a page give the sense of simplicity and clarity. But life doesn’t work like that. And neither should a good story. A good story ought to leave a little grey behind, I think.”
― marcus sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Orwell's vision of our terrible future was that world - the world in which books are banned or burned. Yet it is not the most terrifying world I can think of. I think instead of Huxley [...] I think of his Brave New World. His vision was the more terrible, especially now because it appears to be rapidly coming true, whereas the world of 1984 did not. What is Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read one.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Almost everyone has an inborn need to create; in most people this is thwarted and forgotten, and the drive is pushed into other activities that are less threatening, less difficult, and less rewarding. In some people, that need to create is transmuted into the need to destroy.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Yet every writer worth a good-god damn knows this too, for it is graven into each of us: no one cares for beauty. Not in fiction. Not on its own, not pure, untroubled beauty; not in fiction. [...] For here is the only real difference between the life of reality and the life of fiction. Fiction only works when the beauty is tainted by pain. For fiction is not about life; it's about the troubles of life.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“For fiction is not about life; it's about the troubles in life. That is why we read it. To understand, to grow, to believe, to hope. That all the troubles one faces in life can be overcome, eventually.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Who holds the ultimate responsibility for the story? The writer or the reader, the reader or the writer . . .”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“try thinking the same thing by darkness and see how different if feels.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Monsters lurk in every culture’s life blood – the history of the world is as much the history of its monsters as its angels, and who is the more fascinating: Elizabeth Bathory and her blood-bathing, or Mother Teresa and her poor? Vlad Ţepeş and his impalings, or Saint Francis and his birds? I wish I could give you better answers, I really do, but monsters throng about us; they always have.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“When we read a book, though, we call it ours, don't we, and I have always said that's because readers make a book their own through reading it. They do half the work, with their own imaginations, fleshing things out, painting each character and place and event in more detail than we have actually set out on paper, and we writers merely set the readers on their way.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“I've always said that no matter how bad a book; if it is successful then it is fulfilling some function, it has some strong points, there must be something good about it, or it would have been consigned to oblivion.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“When people burn books, it's because they're afraid of what's inside them, and there's the thing: to be afraid of the contents means that they have power.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Something else: it always struck me as troubling that the words in books are printed in black and white, when life is anything but. The binary colour of words on a page give the sense of simplicity and clarity. But life doesn't work like that.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Yet every writer worth a good-god damn knows this too, for it is graven into each of us: no one cares for beauty. Not in fiction. Not on its own, not pure, untroubled beauty; not in fiction. It’s what we crave in the real world, of course; beauty, and you know I mean that in its broadest sense: the sense of kindness and wisdom and peace and joy: all the things in the world that are beautiful, and all the things we crave in real life, but which are not sufficient to count, on their own, for anything in the world of stories.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve

“Orwell's vision of our terrible future [...] - the world in which books are banned. What is Huxley's horrific vision? It is a world where there is no need for books to be banned, because no one can be bothered to read them'.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Monsters We Deserve