Quotes by Ransom Riggs - Page 2

I had some great English teachers. One of my favorite - her name was Linda Janoff - was wonderful and so irreverent and so smart and encouraging.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Encouraging
Irreverent
Linda
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Pine View was a great school for me - it made it safe to be a nerd. It was okay to really care about doing your homework and doing well in school.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Homework
Okay
Great View Me
Pine
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I loved the idea of a book of fairytales meant especially for peculiar children, and I love even more the idea of making that fictional book real.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Peculiar
Fictional
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I'd always wanted to write a novel, but after attending film school, I'd spent five years knocking on Hollywood's door and had put that idea aside.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Attending
Film School
Aside
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We kind of know there's no more frontiers in the physical world. So the frontiers move from where we haven't been yet to where we've been and abandoned.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Abandoned
Frontiers
World Know More
Physical World
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As writers, we have to make our own work - as bloggers, writing for video games, whatever we can do. Everyone breaks into the business in a different way.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Bloggers
Work Business Way
Breaks
Video Games
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I just like that balance of the real and the fantastical because as a reader and consumer of stories and fantasy, I always want to feel like I can find that world.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Balance
Real
Stories
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Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Care
Laughing
Mean
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I didn't know who I was writing for initially. I assumed 'Miss Peregrine' was for adults, because I was an adult - but I didn't know much about publishing back then.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Publishing
Assumed
Initially
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What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Believe
Everything Happens For A Reason
Things In Life
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I wanted to create characters who could do fantastic things but who weren't exactly superheros - characters who exist on sort of a spectrum from super-ability to disability.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Disability
Spectrum
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In 'Hollow City,' I'm taking all the characters out of the lives they've been secure in for years and plunging them into the unknown. That's how you really get to know them.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Hollow
Secure
Unknown
Plunging
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I was here for a reason. There was something I was meant not simply to be, but to do- and it wasn't to run or hide or give up the minute things seemed terrifying and impossible.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Running
Giving Up
Impossible
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I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Abundance
Deficiency
Ideas
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It was at a big swap meet that I discovered you could buy other people's old discarded family photos and vacation pictures for pretty cheap - a quarter, 50 cents, five bucks for a really nice one.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Vacation
Bucks
Cents
Discarded
Cheap
Quarter
Swap
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'Library of Souls' is longer than 'Hollow City' by a considerable margin, but this time I was on the right track from the beginning, so I never had to start over. It took about 15 months, all told.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Hollow
Over It
Right Track
Track
Considerable
Margin
Souls
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So one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Mother
One Day
Peculiar
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Whenever I try to map things out they inevitably change. Which doesn't mean I don't map them out I just try to embrace the better ideas that come along as my fingers are flying around the keyboard mid-draft!
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Flying
Ideas
Mean
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I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Kids
Coping
Flea Markets
Florida
Garage
Growing Up
Junk
Mechanism
South Florida
Unusual
Collect
Flea
Sales
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Teenagers are extremely smart, and if they think for even a second that an author is 'writing down' to them, or mimicking their voice poorly, or condescending to them in any way, they will throw the book across the room.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Book
Condescending
Mimicking
Smart
Voice
Across
Author
Down
Extremely
Room
Poorly
Second
Teenagers
Throw
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I'm getting a lot of mail from readers, and I'd say 90% seem to be from adults, which amazes me. But then again, I can only write what I imagine I'd like to read, and I'm an adult, so maybe it's not so surprising after all.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Mail
Surprising
Amazes
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I was looking for some vintage furniture, and I came across this booth where they sold old pictures. This guy didn't just have things in a box; he had really curated his collection. Each image was like this little folk masterpiece.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Furniture
Masterpiece
Vintage
Collection
Booth
Folk
Sold
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I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. The first of these came as a terrible shock and, like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Forever
Half
Would Be
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I grew up feeling like a weirdo like many kids do. But I was lucky to find my own home for peculiar children. I went to a school for the gifted in Florida, and it was full of kids who - we were all strange together. And that was a real blessing.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Home
Children
Real
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If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Home
House
Memories
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Just the textures of things are really important to me as I'm writing; I think atmospherics and visuals can have such emotional impact if you can harness the thematic thread between how scenes look and how your characters feel. I like to tug on that thread.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Harness
Thread
Visuals
Look Me Important
Textures
Tug
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I went to film school, trained as a director, have made a lot of movies, and taken a lot of photographs, so I tend to envision things spatially. As I'm working, I need to have a map of the space. I need to know what's happening in all corners simultaneously.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Corners
Film School
Photographs
Envision
Map
Simultaneously
Trained
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'The Tales' are an important part of 'Hollow City,' when the kids discover secrets encoded in them that end up saving their lives. I wrote two tales as part of 'Hollow City,' and spent the next couple of years finishing the trilogy but itching to write more tales.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Finishing
Hollow
Itching
Tales
Discover
Important Part
Secrets
Trilogy
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Los Angeles, which is where I live, happens to be a great place for junk. People have a lot of it, and they sell it and trade it: At these big swap meets, many, many hundreds of dealers of junk will descend upon a football field on a Saturday and sell all their stuff.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Football
Football Field
Junk
Los Angeles
Saturday
Descend
Great Football People
Angeles
Dealers
Sell
Great Place
Hundreds
Los
Meets
Swap
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Every snapshot collector has obsessions. Some only collect photos of cars. Others like World War II, or babies, or old-timey girls in old-timey swimsuits. I happen to collect the weird stuff: photos that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little. The uncanny.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Girl
War
Baby
World War Ii
Weird
Babies
Neck
Collect
Collector
Obsessions
Photos
Snapshot
Stand Up
World War
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But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around-they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Book
Monday
Years
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You find a lot of junk when you're searching through lost and tossed photo ephemera, but every so often you'll find a gem, a wallet-sized masterpiece you're certain could hang on the wall of a gallery if only someone with a name had taken it. Find one or two of those and you're hooked for life.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Gallery
Hooked
Junk
Lost
Masterpiece
Taken
Wall
Photo
Gem
Hang
One Or Two
Searching
Tossed
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Some days, I would find what seemed like entire family trees, torn from once-treasured albums and dumped in disorganized bins, selling 10 for a dollar. I wondered how people could give up pictures of their great-grandparents for complete strangers to paw through - or why complete strangers would want them.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Disorganized
Dumped
Selling
Torn
Complete
Dollar
Entire
Pictures
Paw
Strangers
Seemed
Trees
Wondered
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It never occurred to me that there were so many wonderful photos that had been orphaned and were out there in the world, waiting to be found. Over time, I found a lot of very strange pictures of kids, and I wanted to know who they were, what their stories were. Since the photos had no context, I decided I needed to make it up.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Time Waiting World
Context
Occurred
Orphaned
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Some of my favorite photos from the old days are of people who maybe didn't know how to smile. Maybe smiling in photos wasn't an accepted form of behavior back then. But the big eyes and the oversized dolls that people are carrying, and it's something about their hair - the anachronisms of these photos are really what creep me out.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Eye
Hair
People
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There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Life
Book
Romance
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I own a few thousand snapshots, which is small by the standards of most collectors I know. I generally only buy photos I think I may actually be able to use in a book one day. I need that focus when buying, because without it I'd just buy everything and my house would be overrun with bucket loads of snapshots; there are just too many beautiful images in the world, and I'd need to own them all.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Beautiful
Book
Thinking
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Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of these ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Life
Echoes
Stars
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I've never really been interested in the vintage photos people pay lots of money for -- civil war tintypes or old daguerrotypes of famous people. Nor do I have any interest in the really gross, dark stuff that some people pay top-dollar, like post-mortem photos of babies (yuck) or press photos of old murder scenes or whatever. I collect in these little niches most other people don't care about -- dark-and-weird-but-fun -- and photos that have been written on, which a lot of sellers think hurts their value. All of which is good news for me!
Ransom Riggs / Writer
Baby
Fun
Hurt
Copy Quote

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Ransom Riggs Quotes - Page 2

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