Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.
David BrinRead
There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Scientific training can enhance writing skills, but creativity is crucial regardless of one's academic background.
David Brin's quote reflects on the relationship between scientific knowledge and writing, particularly in the genre of science fiction. He suggests that while a background in science may improve an author's ability to craft believable narratives, a strong literary foundation and creativity are equally important for producing exceptional work. This highlights the value of diverse skills and perspectives in the creative process.
Themes
ScienceFictionWritingCreativityTraining
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, an instructor might use this quote to explain the importance of both science and creativity in writing.
More from David Brin
All quotes →Competition, by itself, always leads to cheating by the powerful, who try to establish pyramids of power, like feudalism. Yet, competition is the great creative force! So how do we save it from its own contradictions? By cooperation! By cooperating with each other, via politics, to make rules and prevent cheating, so that competition can thrive!
David BrinRead
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.
David BrinRead
It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.
David BrinRead
When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.
David BrinRead
Human beings are inherently misled into subjective fantasies, but there's a saving grace. We all have different delusions. Other people don't necessarily share yours, and hence they will help you penetrate yours through the miracle of criticism!
David BrinRead
Similar quotes
If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
Michael SpecterRead
Nothing in the natural world makes sense - except when seen in the light of evolution
David AttenboroughRead
We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.
Richard DawkinsRead
It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
John DeweyRead
There can sometimes be this fear among laypeople: 'I don't understand everything in science perfectly, so I just can't say anything about it.' I think it's good to know that we scientists are also confused some of the time.
Lisa RandallRead
A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf.
Albert SabinRead