Elizabeth Moon famous quotes

Normal' is a dryer setting.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Autism #Normal

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Years #Degrees #Firsts

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Degrees #Biology

I revear all the gods but those that delight in cruelty. If Ra's light is kindly in your eyes than may his light shine on us all.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Hope #Eye #Light

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Real #Past #People

Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Book #Character #People

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Military #School #Texas

My personal feeling about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real world, to our everyday world.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Real #Feelings #Everyday

It is not wrong to be different. Sometimes it is hard, but it is not wrong.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Different #Sometimes

People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day - even hour to hour.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#People #Hours #Messy

No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Trying #World #Matter

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Book #Writing #Fiction

When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Emotional #Interesting #Intellectual

One thing nobody can do better than you is be you.
-- Elizabeth Moon

To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Hands

I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance... Maybe my questions matter.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Ignorance #Light #Touching

Motivation is the power behind plot.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Motivation #Plot #Behinds

Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Past #Defense #Fantasy

This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Doe #Rockets #Initiative

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Eye #Blue #Color

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Future #Fiction #May

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Book #Character #Fiction

In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a characters and let his perceptions take over.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Character #Ego #Perception

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Perfect #Bass #Strings

But in fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Real #People #World

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Physics #Calculus #University

Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Pjs #Shoes #Yarn

Having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Struggle #Character #Chance

I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Life #Order #Autism

Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Heart #Fighting #Sheep

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Thinking #Roots #Community

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put 'brown'. I put 'brown', but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look atr other people's eyes.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Eye #Writing #Color

Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Thinking #Cost #Want

Having a mother who had been an aeronautical engineer convinced me that more things should be open to women.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Mother #Should

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Brain #Different #Stories

Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Mother #Feminist #Mind

What it boils down to is that parenting a child with autism is a difficult job; writing about it is far easier.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Jobs #Children #Writing

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#School #Sunday #Taught

I used to not back down from a challenge.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Challenges #Used

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Drug #Rattlesnakes #Bother

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Fantasy #Astronomy #Biomedical

I like the Beatles, of course, but that's when I grew up.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Grew Up #Grew

I had, of course, no model for that sort of woman being married, but I can make that up as I go along.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Married #Models #Being Married

I can become very emotional about math, although I'm not that good at it.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#Math #Emotional

Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store.
-- Elizabeth Moon

#People #Normal #Sometimes