Joe Haldeman Quotes.
The worst advice a young writer can get is “Write what you know.” Imagination is more important than experience.
[Spielberg and I] had a disagreement over what God was….He thought God was Stephen Spielberg, but that thought had never occurred to me.
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.
Rationalism doesn’t require “belief,” only observation. The real, measurable world doesn’t care what you believe.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t ‘write what you know.’ Make up something new!
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?
Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.
No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war’s dislocation.
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.
I carry a notebook and write down things to do, and I write out thoughts and stuff like that.
Traveling anywhere in the world involves some risk. You could always opt to spend your life cowering under your bed.
Political art – not always a contradiction in terms – can destroy institutions, or eat away at them.
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.
A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.
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.
I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don’t just use it for writing my fiction.
