Connie Willis
Connie Willis
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis, commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major awards than any other writer—most recently the year's "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear. She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 December 1945
CountryUnited States of America
A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.
Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.
There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I'd like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O'Reilly's macaques, which have to have more sense.
I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.
People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.
I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.
And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.
No," I said finally. "Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?" "1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.
I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction.
When you've written your characters into a corner, you just hand the manuscript over to your partner and make her fix it.
I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty.
I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).
I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.
And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.