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Joe Haldeman Quotes

Joe Haldeman Quotes.

The worst advice a young writer can get is “Write what you know.” Imagination is more important than experience.
Joe Haldeman
[Spielberg and I] had a disagreement over what God was….He thought God was Stephen Spielberg, but that thought had never occurred to me.
Joe Haldeman
One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it.
Joe Haldeman
Rationalism doesn’t require “belief,” only observation. The real, measurable world doesn’t care what you believe.
Joe Haldeman
It’s fair to say that white America wouldn’t have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music – from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop – and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as ‘serious.’
Joe Haldeman
When I first started working at MIT, back in the ’80s, our writing department had a joint cocktail party with the Harvard writing department. It was kind of oil-and-water.
Joe Haldeman
There’s something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there’s something special about writing into a book, to take a blank book and turn it into an actual book.
Joe Haldeman
One hopes that they’ll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we’re all done for if that happens. I don’t want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.
Joe Haldeman
Doctors don’t seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.
Joe Haldeman
I don’t think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.
Joe Haldeman
Don’t ‘write what you know.’ Make up something new!
Joe Haldeman
The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was ‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?
Joe Haldeman
Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.
Joe Haldeman
No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war’s dislocation.
Joe Haldeman
I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth.
Joe Haldeman
I carry a notebook and write down things to do, and I write out thoughts and stuff like that.
Joe Haldeman
Traveling anywhere in the world involves some risk. You could always opt to spend your life cowering under your bed.
Joe Haldeman
Political art – not always a contradiction in terms – can destroy institutions, or eat away at them.
Joe Haldeman
Hemingway was a jerk. I mean he was really a great jerk. He was a good writer, and he did all sorts of things that I would never have the courage to do, but I don’t think I’d enjoy being in the same room with him. He’s not my kind of person.
Joe Haldeman
A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.
Joe Haldeman
Bad books on writing tell you to “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW”, a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Joe Haldeman
I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don’t just use it for writing my fiction.
Joe Haldeman