Chris Wooding Quotations

I'm a graphic-novel guy. I can't handle the wait for monthly or bi-monthly comics; I need the story finished so I can buy the whole thing.

I have a great affection for comics, and I think that people underrate comics as a genre.

I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.

Steampunk has been hovering around for a long while, and it's never really caught on in a big way.

'Malice' wasn't about horror to start with but an underground comic driven by the power of rumour. However, as nothing fuels a rumour like fear, I decided that it had to be a frightening comic.

We relate comics to the main super-heroes, but it's a great medium through which all sorts of stories are told.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.

There was a big horror boom in the '80s, and I liked its originality and what you could get away with.

I wanted to write an adventure in the old-fashioned way, something to which I could apply the adjective 'rollicking' and not feel embarrassed. But I've never liked my heroes to be too heroic, so they ended up being a bunch of criminals instead.

In my head, scenes are shot from certain angles; there are camera pans, all of that kind of stuff. Converting those visuals to comic format was mostly a matter of adapting them to the rhythm of paneling.

I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.

Real life is a story, too, only much more complicated. It’s still got a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everyone follows the same rules, you know. . . It’s just that there are more of them. Everyone has chapters and cliffhangers. Everyone has their journey to make. Some go far and wide and come back empty-handed; some don’t go anywhere and their journey makes them richest of all. Some tales have a moral and some don’t make any sense. Some will make you laugh, others make you cry. The world is a library, young Poison, and you’ll never get to read the same book twice.

Cynicism was a one-way path, and once taken the way back was lost forever.

We may seem the weakest and most insignificant of all the Realms, but our strength comes in other ways. We have what no other race has: imagination. Any one of us, even the lowliest, can create worlds within ourselves; we can people them with the most extraordinary creatures, the most amazing inventions, the most incredible things. We can live in those worlds ourselves, if we choose; and in our own worlds, we can be as we want to be. Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead, Poison, for in imagination, we can create wonders.

But time has a way of stealthily deciding a person’s mind without her conscious knowledge, and as she studied and procrastinated, Poison found one day that she had come to know her choice.

I just wanted them to die," said Poison. "They didn't have to make such a drama about it.

Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.

Some of us are born in the right place, and some of us have to go look for it.

Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice.

Not for the first time, he wished he commanded a highly trained bunch of soldiers instead of a ragtag mob of rejects in varying stages of alcoholism.

How was is that life never worked out the way it did in his head?

On reflection,’ Crake said to Frey, as they huddled behind an upturned table, ‘this wasn’t one of your better plans.

If there was one thing worse than being cheated, it was being cheated by someone who referred to themselves in the third person.

Poison." he said, deadpan. "That's an unusual name to give your child. You must love her very much." She's a treasure." Bram agreed, blithely ignoing the sarcasm. .... Then went a few dozen feet in silence, until they were out of eaarshor of the gaurd. She's a treasure." Poison mimicked, and Bram burst out laughing.

Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead . . . for in imagination, we can create wonders.

Then a person has only one tale?” No, some have two or three separate ones or more,” Fleet said. “Some people have many tales. Sometimes they are linked into one big tale, sometimes they are utterly distinct. Most people do not have one at all.

Don't confuse contentment with happiness...

Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.

I do screen work, adult books, kids books and comic stuff, which gives me a pretty full plate. The problem is usually choosing which one I want to work on next.