Samantha Shannon Quotes

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

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

I am the first one to go to university in my family. I am the first writer as well. My dad is a retired policeman, and my mom works for a glass-processing company. She is health-and-safety manager, and my stepfather is a plumber. I have four half siblings, one from my mom's marriage and three from my dad's marriage, so we are kind of scattered.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I've been writing since I was about thirteen but didn't start a book until 2007. I spent four years writing a sci-fi novel before I wrote 'The Bone Season' at nineteen.

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I was a shy child, and when I was 13, I started wearing braces on my teeth. I used to be acutely self-conscious, and I think writing was a way of withdrawing into my own imagination.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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.'

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I was born in 1991, and 'Harry Potter' came out in '97, so, you know, I was really obsessed. I used to read them in one night.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.

- Samantha Shannon

'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.'

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I was so sure I wanted to be a novelist. I would spend hours and hours every day writing. Little stories about nothing in particular. I recall one about someone with an illness. But my dedication wasn't really healthy, and it reached the point where I wasn't sleeping. My mum would tell me, 'You need to go outside to get some fresh air.'

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

For me, just being published feels like success.

- Samantha Shannon

I had lived in that part of London that used to be called Islington since I was eight. I attended a private school for girls, leaving at sixteen to work. That was in the year 2056. AS 127, if you use the Scion calendar.

- Samantha Shannon

I wanted to write a sci-fi story that would appeal to young women. Loads of girls like sci-fi, but it's more culturally associated with guys.

- Samantha Shannon

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.

- Samantha Shannon

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

- Samantha Shannon

I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.

- Samantha Shannon