Literary Birthday – 2 August – Robert Holdstock

Robert Holdstock was born on 2 August 1948 and died on 29 November 2009.

Robert Holdstock Quotes

1. If you’ve got to do it, do it, and do it your own way. If you’re doing it for the money, do it any-which-way they ask, and remember to keep that heart golden.
2. Pragmatism is nothing without imagination; and imagination is wasted without pragmatism.
3. I’d started writing fiction when I was at ‘primary school’; ghost stories mostly. My Grandfather was a wonderful storyteller — very ghoulish tales; and many stories about his experiences in the First World War. Apparently, he was told not to frighten his grandchildren. But I loved being frightened! I’m glad to have inherited his imagination.
4. All characters are based on elements of a writer’s personal experience.
5. All my early stories were combinations of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, but involving such sinister aliens as the ‘Jupiterians’ (I didn’t know at that time that ‘Jovian’ was the accepted name for creatures from Jupiter).
6. But stories are fragile. Like people’s lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever.
7. You just have to want to complete it. Regimentation comes with the urgency of the need to complete. I start slowly: the brilliant beginning! Then months of thinking, of shaking people by the shoulders in the street and crying delightedly ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got the next scene!’ Only to return home and discover that it doesn’t work. Then despair, disillusion, boredom; then panic, crisis, the tearing of shirts…

Source for quotes: London Tribe Interview

Robert Holdstock was an award-winning English author best known for his Celtic, Nordic, Gothic, and Pictish fantasy novels in the mythic fiction genre. His work explored philosophical, psychological, anthropological, spiritual, and woodland themes, often blending mythology with deep explorations of human experience. Early in his career, Holdstock wrote science fiction, including Eye Among the Blind and Where Times Winds Blow. However, it was his fantasy writing that brought him lasting recognition. His breakthrough novel, Mythago Wood, was published in 1984 and became the first book in the acclaimed Ryhope Wood series, which continued until the publication of Avilion in 2009. Holdstock received three British Science Fiction Association Awards and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Mythago Wood.

Source for photograph: Philippe Gindre, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
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