Best 20 quotes of Daryl Gregory on MyQuotes

Every other writer's process is sort of vaguely scary and appalling.

Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment call, since what is possible and what is not cannot be objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the reader.

God gets the easiest performance reviews.

I want to stay in the writing long enough to become a falling star of the up-and-coming genre, then a has-been known only by collectors, and finally a rediscovered artist who is finally recognized as a creative giant misunderstood in his own time. Then forgotten again. But if I get removed from the list, it'll probably be because there are just too many damn good writers out there, and any poll of some assortment of editors is going to come up with an equally valid, equally varied list.

The best aunts aren't substitute parents, they're co-conspirators.

The highlight of my career was my first sale, to F&SF, in 1989. Nothing yet has topped that moment. I was weeping in joy and relief. Publishing one story was all that I ever wanted, or expected. Everything since then - award nominations, getting into best-of anthologies, meeting my idols at conventions, drinking with my idols at conventions - has been wonderful, but it's all gravy.

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it’s no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster’s final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn’t dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It’s the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

Duty eats free will for breakfast.

Even peasants can build a cathedral.

Everyone in the class turned. On one of the tables, a frog had started to smoke, and the limbs were twitching spasmodically. Dr. Herbert rushed over, clapping his hands. "It's alive!" he cried.

Fucking is not an adequate name for what we just did there,' Irene said. 'We need a better word. Something more festive.' 'Fucktivities?' he offered. 'Celebratio,' she said. 'Funnilingus!

I’ve always been a sucker for the beautiful and the batshit.

I walked downhill to the rental place, my backpack ten pounds heavier than it was this morning because of three huge textbooks: one on government from world history class; one from English class called Catastrophes of New England: 1650 to 1875; and a much-used book from my last class of the day, Non-Euclidean Geometry. The class was taught by Mr. Gint, a pale, balding man who barely looked at us. The entire class period he sat at his desk with a protractor and pencil, drawing pictures and muttering to himself.

Look, you can't think of a person like it's one thing, one 'I' that decides everything. The brain is a collective, a huge number of all these thinking modules. It doesn't make a decision, it arrives at one.

Love at first sight is a myth, but thundering sexual attraction at first sight is hard science.

Perhaps that's a smile on Delia's face-but Delia's half skull turns every expression into a leer. She says, "Your uncle had a talent, kid. He made families wherever he went.

The coffee was terrible and the bacon was ordinary, but the pancakes were avatars of some perfect Ur-cake whose existence until now could only be deduced from the statistical variations in other, lesser pancakes.

The human egg is a Mrs. Bennet, desperate to marry off her daughters...It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sperm must be in want of a matching strand of DNA.

There was as much joy in surrendering free will as exercising it.

The rhythm of breath may have been our first language.