Samantha Shannon Quotes

My silver cord – the link between my body and my spirit – was extremely sensitive. It was what allowed me to sense dreamscapes at a distance. It could also snap me back into my skin.

For me, just being published feels like success.

I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don’t plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.

Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.

I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien‘s legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.

I’m often daydreaming, and it’s because I’ve always liked the idea of there being something more than the normal world.

I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read ‘The Handmaid‘s Tale.’ Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.

I have always been driven; I’ve always wanted to be published, and I wanted to make that happen, so I worked very hard. ‘Perfectionist‘ would be a word to describe me.

‘The Bone Season‘ is violent. There’s sex. My little brother keeps asking to read it, and he’s 9, so I’m like, ‘No, it’s not happening.’

Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn’t think about ‘Harry Potter‘ when I wrote ‘The Bone Season.’

I always felt that sci-fi and fantasy were my thing. Bit of a geek, I’m afraid. But I like creating worlds, and I felt it was a genre that gave me more freedom. It just seemed like I belonged there.

I’ve never had a supernatural experience. I’ve been tempted to maybe have a tarot-card reading, but I don’t know if I’d necessarily want to know.

J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don’t think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.

I was a hacker of sorts. Not a mind ‘reader,’ exactly; more a mind ‘radar,’ in tune with the workings of the aether. I could sense the nuances of dreamscapes and rogue spirits. Things outside myself. Things the average voyant wouldn’t feel.

I was not a rebellious teenager. I was a sit-in-your-room teenager.

I was always more interested in my books and my writing than going out. It’s OK to say I’m a nerd. That’s me.

People question what I thought of Oxford. Students used to talk about the ‘Oxford bubble‘ because the place can make you feel cut off from the rest of the world. I would forget there were places like London that were not centred round libraries and essays.

London had so much death in its history, it was hard to find a spot without spirits. They formed a safety net. Still, you had to hope the ones you got were good.

I often look at places and kind of mentally convert them to fantasy versions of themselves.

I was mostly an indoor girl at university. Where other students did drama or music or sport alongside their degrees, I wrote. I used to work on essays and classwork during the day and ‘The Bone Season’ in the evenings.

I’m not going to give it the big ‘I am’ now that I’m a New York Times bestseller.

Whenever anyone calls me ‘The new J..K. Rowling,’ I think, ‘What’s wrong with the old one?’

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ when I left high school, which has always been very special to me – it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I’m also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions.

It is a strange world, Oxford – quite claustrophobic. I was often glad I was only there for eight weeks at a time.

What I like about Oxford is how small it is; it’s really more of a big town than a city.