Robin Sloan Quotes

Powerful Robin Sloan for Daily Growth

About Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan, born in 1985, is an American novelist, storyteller, and media artist who seamlessly blends digital culture, technology, and storytelling in his captivating works. Growing up in Michigan, he developed a love for computers at a young age, which later influenced his writing as he explored the interplay between technology and human connection. Sloan earned a degree in literature from Northwestern University before moving to New York City to pursue a career in digital media. His first significant work was a collaboration with McSweeney's, an independent publishing company co-founded by renowned author Dave Eggers, where he served as the Director of Technology. During this period, Sloan honed his craft and developed his unique storytelling style that marries technology and fiction. In 2011, Sloan published his debut novel, "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore," a genre-defying tale of a young web designer who finds himself immersed in an eccentric world of secret societies, ancient texts, and high-tech puzzles. The book was critically acclaimed and won the Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Novel. Sloan followed up his successful debut with "Sourdough" in 2017, a story about a San Francisco woman who becomes enmeshed in the world of sourdough bread baking and uncovers a hidden community within her city. The novel further showcased Sloan's knack for blending real-world technology with fantastical elements to create engaging narratives that resonate with readers. Sloan continues to explore the intersection of technology, storytelling, and humanity in his works, making him a significant figure in modern literature and an influential voice in the realm of digital culture.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Every now and then, a story gets stuck in my head, and I have to write it."

This quote signifies that for author Robin Sloan, stories have an innate power to captivate him deeply. He feels compelled to share these narratives once they lodge themselves in his mind; writing serves as a means of expression and release, ensuring the story finds its way out into the world. The quote underscores the personal significance of storytelling for Sloan, emphasizing that stories are not merely written or read, but they can also take root within us, demanding to be told.

"The world is awash with stories. The trick is knowing which ones to tell."

This quote underscores the idea that there's an abundance of narratives in our world, and it's essential to discern which ones to share or focus on. It suggests that the art of storytelling lies not only in having a plethora of stories but also in the ability to choose, prioritize, and share the right stories effectively. This idea can be applied to various aspects of life, from literature and media to personal experiences and communication, emphasizing the power of choice and discernment in shaping our narratives and understanding of reality.

"There's something about stories that can open your eyes wide to the possibilities of what could be."

This quote by Robin Sloan emphasizes the transformative power of stories in expanding our perception and imagination. By engaging with a story, we are opened up to new perspectives and ideas about the world, enabling us to envision possibilities that we may not have considered otherwise. Stories can serve as catalysts for change, fostering creativity, empathy, and a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

"Stories are how we make sense of our lives, and they're how we change our lives."

This quote suggests that stories serve as tools for understanding and interpreting our personal experiences (making sense), as well as catalysts for driving change in our lives. Stories, whether fictional or based on real events, have the power to evoke emotions, challenge perspectives, and inspire action, making them instrumental in shaping our individual and collective narratives.

"It's amazing what you can accomplish if no one is watching."

This quote by Robin Sloan suggests that people are more likely to take risks, innovate, or accomplish tasks when they feel unobserved or free from judgement. It implies that societal pressure, expectations, or fear of failure can sometimes hinder us from exploring our full potential. When we're given the freedom to experiment and make mistakes without the fear of being watched, we may discover our true capabilities. However, it is important to remember that honesty, accountability, and integrity should not be compromised in the pursuit of personal growth or discovery.

Baking and coding involve using the same parts of your brain and a lot of the same skills, like being able to follow directions or create directions in a very systematic way.

- Robin Sloan

Like, Very, Using, Baking

For a whole year in elementary school, when the class marched down to the school library every week, I would refuse to return my book. I would just check it out again and again. Every week. For a whole year. The object of my fourth-grade filibuster was 'D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.'

- Robin Sloan

Book, Week, Year, Filibuster

What is a game like 'No Man's Sky,' really? A set of symbols that specify a world but do not themselves constitute it. A rich grammar that's inert without the trigger of human attention.

- Robin Sloan

Sky, Game, Set, Trigger

Doing research for 'Penumbra,' I read quite a bit about the early history of printing, and the more I did, the more it sounded like... the Internet today. There was crazy competition and upheaval; there were constant arguments about new techniques, new materials, new machines; and, of course, there were fortunes to be made.

- Robin Sloan

Doing, Constant, About, Fortunes

I love the web, but man, I look at my browser, and there are, like, twenty tabs up there, all jostling for space and time, all framed by a mosaic of other apps, other work, other entertainment... so even when I really am paying attention to something on the web, there's this peripheral haze.

- Robin Sloan

Love, Entertainment, Other, Browser

When I was 14, I spent a huge amount of time on the Internet, but not the Internet we know today. It was 1994, so while the World Wide Web existed, it wasn't generally accessible. Prodigy and CompuServe were popular, and AOL was on the rise, but I didn't have access to the web, and no one I knew had access to the web.

- Robin Sloan

Access, Had, Accessible, Prodigy

There's certainly satire written about techies, but it's so snarky and snide and doesn't treat him as a whole person. The people I worked with at Twitter - they're very analytical, but they're also deep and thoughtful - I feel like they deserved a charismatic spokesperson.

- Robin Sloan

Deep, Treat, Very, Spokesperson

I think one of the most exciting things about the whole digital side of publishing is that it eventually allows you to operate at any length. That also means shorter stuff, too.

- Robin Sloan

Think, Digital, Means, Exciting Things

When I'm using the Internet, I have 25 tabs open, and even if somebody sends me... something interesting, odds are I'll forget about it, or it'll get kind of lost in the shuffle.

- Robin Sloan

Lost, Get, About, Odds

People tend to think of the quest as a sort of fanciful or fantastical form, but actually, I think it's pretty realistic. I think that story of gathering allies to your side - recruiting your band of companions - actually matches the shape of most great careers, most great lives.

- Robin Sloan

Quest, I Think, Your, Recruiting

'Parable of the Sower' is capital-I Important. Put it on the literary fiction shelf. Put it on the Holy Crap fiction shelf. Put it on every shelf. This is one of the all-time great American novels.

- Robin Sloan

Fiction, Holy, Literary, All-Time

It turns out you can train a neural network on a big body of text. It can be Wikipedia; it can be all the works of Charles Dickens; it could be all of the Internet. They can use grammar and put words together in interesting and convincing ways - and, I think, unexpected and beautiful ways.

- Robin Sloan

Big, I Think, Works, Dickens

There's just no escaping it: The half-life of media on the Internet is super short. Tweets flow and fade; pages that look great today will be gone or, at best, riddled with broken links and outmoded code in five years, tops.

- Robin Sloan

Code, Escaping, Tops, Fade

When we talk about novels, we don't often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.

- Robin Sloan

Why, Pure, About, Why Not

Everyone's lives are sort of a succession, almost like handing the baton of your life off from one person to the next to the next to the next. And hopefully, that goes on for a long time, and the changes are healthy and interesting and not, like, spiraling into darkness.

- Robin Sloan

Changes, Next, Almost, Baton

I am comfortable combining the old and the new.

- Robin Sloan

I Am, New, Comfortable, Combining

We range widely, we readers of fiction, but I think we all need a home. Mine is science fiction. It's my home shelf, my homeland, my home planet, my essential genre.

- Robin Sloan

Think, I Think, Mine, Science Fiction

Without science fiction, without the influence these books have had on me over the years, I'm not sure I would care much about reading or writing today.

- Robin Sloan

Fiction, Over, Sure, Science Fiction

I think that some of the archetypes and works of science fiction that have pierced pop culture and stayed there are the darker ones and the dystopias.

- Robin Sloan

Think, Some, I Think, Science Fiction

When MUDs appeared, that was an entirely novel experience, and often an addictive one. Long before Twitter or Snapchat, MUDs inspired the moral panic of the moment: a 1993 'Wired' article titled 'The Dragon Ate My Homework' described university students losing themselves in these virtual worlds. Keep in mind: they were just words on a screen.

- Robin Sloan

Virtual, Wired, Worlds, Article

When you close a tab or when you finish an article on the web, it's gone unless you go back into your history or search for it or explicitly try to find it. Apps on your phone have this special property: they hang around. In some ways, they're more like a book on a bookshelf than they are like web pages.

- Robin Sloan

Some, Hang, Explicitly, Article

Primes seem to me to be these unarbitrary, unique, fated things. It cannot be coincidence that the mythical numbers of storytelling like 3, 7, and 13 are random. The lower-end primes have incredible resonance in fiction and art.

- Robin Sloan

Art, Storytelling, Like, Coincidence

Whether it's 'Fish' or 'Annabel Scheme' or 'The Truth About the East Wind,' I often find myself crafting custom containers to hold the kind of content I want to create.

- Robin Sloan

Myself, Kind, Scheme, Wind

When you're making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you - and on your publisher - to make something that's worth buying in its physical edition.

- Robin Sloan

Book, Think, Making, Publisher

When you're writing for the Internet, you have the analytics, and you know that people are bailing every second. But various people kept reminding me that once people have bought a book, they're in. You don't have to be selling them on every page.

- Robin Sloan

Book, Them, Bought, Bailing

In some ways I grew up in the public library in Troy, Michigan.

- Robin Sloan

Library, Some, Ways, Public Library

It's not like 'Print versus Digital - only one will survive.' We live in a hybrid world now, and I think the near-term future is also hybrid.

- Robin Sloan

Think, Digital, I Think, Versus

For me, writing in public is actually super energizing and so much fun. Especially when writing can typically be really painful and certainly hard, and often, you're staring at the page and thinking, like, 'Uh, is this any good? What am I doing?'

- Robin Sloan

Good, Thinking, Doing, So Much Fun

A lot of folks focus on using Twitter as a marketing tool. They'll have a bump that says something like 'Tweet about the NewTeeVee show! Use the hashtag #newteevee.' And that's great - folks should definitely do that. What gets us really excited, though, is when they go an extra step and start to transform tweets into TV content.

- Robin Sloan

Use, TV, About, Extra

Print books have an amazing superpower because they don't disappear when you're done with them. Books on the shelf remind you that they exist.

- Robin Sloan

Done, Disappear, Them, Superpower

Social systems have values - arguments baked into their design. For example, Twitter's core argument seems to be, 'Everything should be public, and messages should find the largest audience possible.' Snapchat's might be, 'Communication should be private and ephemeral.'

- Robin Sloan

Argument, Private, Largest, Baked

'Minecraft' is a game about creation, yes. But it is just as much a game about secret knowledge.

- Robin Sloan

Game, Yes, About, Just As Much

My parents live in northern Michigan, and every year, in the summer, we visit them for a few weeks.

- Robin Sloan

Michigan, Year, Weeks, Visit

If you come from the Internet, as I do - I think of it as sort of my native country - there's a lot of great things happening on the Internet, but one of the things, one of the feelings you just can't escape is the sense that it's really hard to keep people's attention.

- Robin Sloan

Country, I Think, Lot, Escape

You can go as far back as fifth grade, and you will find me tinkering with media and computers, making things that are a little off the beaten track.

- Robin Sloan

Will, Making, Tinkering, Fifth

Prediction just means you saw where the world might be going: ho-hum. Influence, though - ah. Influence, direct and acknowledged, means you actually steered the world, even if only a tiny bit.

- Robin Sloan

Means, Though, Acknowledged, Steered

If I am honest with myself, a not-insignificant fraction of my enjoyment of any episode of 'Game of Thrones' is delivered in its opening moments. I sit down, settle in, and... BUM-bum, bah-dah-BUM-bum.

- Robin Sloan

Myself, Game, Settle, Fraction

I saw the short stories people were doing on Kindle and really liked the idea of seeing something I'd written on that screen.

- Robin Sloan

Doing, Idea, Stories, Kindle

We're looking at dozens, sometimes hundreds of things every day in articles, videos, and we never look at them again. Even if we do like them, even if we tweet them out to all of our followers on Twitter, we don't return to it.

- Robin Sloan

Every Day, Sometimes, Dozens, Hundreds

The stimulation I get from my phone does not feel like the opposite of boredom to me. It actually feels like a different flavor of boredom... a twitchier flavor. And sometimes, it's almost more irritation than stimulation. It's an itch.

- Robin Sloan

Boredom, Itch, Feels, Flavor

When you do something a little bit extreme or weird, it helps make it more interesting and more amenable to being written about.

- Robin Sloan

Interesting, More, Amenable, Extreme

If a shop has a neon Superman logo in the window, I will enter. If it has a neon Superman logo in the window, a Bat-symbol next to it, and a dragon under the eaves, I am already inside.

- Robin Sloan

Will, Next, Shop, Enter

'Gone Home' is a game about exploration, and everything you'll experience is tied intimately to the space of the spooky house around you. Your task is simple: Poke around.

- Robin Sloan

Game, Exploration, Tied, Poke

In the case of 'Fish,' I did the writing, design, and code all at the same time, so the form and the content were fused together. I'd change some words, get an idea, change some code, see if it worked, change more words, and so on.

- Robin Sloan

Some, Idea, Code, Fused

When you've biked only on quiet cul-de-sacs and college campuses, the idea of riding in the city, right up there alongside the cars, seems, frankly, pretty absurd.

- Robin Sloan

College, Pretty, Alongside, College Campuses

The vision of the Internet as a vast digital wasteland isn't correct. Everything is awesome, and we have more stuff to read than we ever have in history.

- Robin Sloan

Digital, Read, Correct, Vast

I liked the sort of YA classics. I loved 'The Chronicles of Narnia.' I loved 'The Chronicles of Prydain' by Lloyd Alexander, who is amazing. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in.

- Robin Sloan

Classics, Sort, Liked, Ya

This is what I think is fun about fiction - you get to use as much history as you want as scaffolding and then go beyond it and change it and mutate it.

- Robin Sloan

Think, Fiction, I Think, Scaffolding

Good writing is really meaningful, and it's one of the - it's still one of the best tools we have to get and capture people's attention.

- Robin Sloan

Best, Good Writing, Still, Capture

You can really find yourself at sea when you're becoming an adult and suddenly have to feed yourself for the first time.

- Robin Sloan

Becoming, Suddenly, Really, Feed

Books are anchored. You return to books. You don't return to a tweet.

- Robin Sloan

You, Books, Anchored, Tweet

I think I'm one of those people that kind of thinks everybody's got an identity, and maybe that's the core of their personality. But I think we change enough over the years that it's like a succession of different people.

- Robin Sloan

Maybe, Everybody, I Think, Succession

If I look into my past, I was definitely into inventors. I was into stories of Edison and Tesla and da Vinci and all these guys making stuff in their garage.

- Robin Sloan

Making, Stories, Edison, Inventors

Selling books is hard to engineer.

- Robin Sloan

Selling, Hard, Books, Engineer

I got a bike - a fixed-gear with bright blue wheels, custom-made to my specifications. I am a San Francisco techno-hipster, so this selection was a bit of a self-caricature. But sometimes the predictable thing turns out to be the best thing, too, and you can't let that stop you.

- Robin Sloan

Sometimes, Wheels, Francisco, Bike

I think, personally - I don't know if other readers would agree - but reading 'Penumbra,' I detect an Internet writer or a writer who came up on the Internet.

- Robin Sloan

Think, Other, I Think, Detect

I was always a computer kid, and I grew up with the Internet and always found it fascinating.

- Robin Sloan

Computer, Always, Found, Fascinating

A gift shouldn't feel like homework.

- Robin Sloan

Gift, Feel, Like, Homework

On the Twitter media team, we believe that tweets drive TV tune-in.

- Robin Sloan

Media, Twitter, TV, Tweets

You can't think of technology as separate from all of our human drama anymore.

- Robin Sloan

Technology, Think, Drama, Separate

If you're searching for quotes on a different topic, feel free to browse our Topics page or explore a diverse collection of quotes from various Authors to find inspiration.