Literary Birthday – 10 April – John M. Ford

John M. Ford was born 10 April 1957, and died 25 September 2006.

John M. Ford Quotes

1. Creating the fictional background for a game world isn’t significantly different from creating a background for fiction.
2. Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.
3. I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That’s what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we’ll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn’t so, nor will it be made so.
4. The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating.
5. There are readers who want every point to be clearly and unambiguously set forth, and there are those who want to pry ideas and meanings out for themselves.
6. I’m very happy that the New York Times has spoken well of my stuff; who wouldn’t be? But it’s not a choice I made.
7. Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author’s intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.

John M. Ford was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet. He is the author of Growing Up Weightless.

Source for Image: David Dyer-Bennet, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JohnMFord_2001_ddb.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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