Kage Baker Quotes

What has 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz' got in its favor? Quite a lot, from our point of view in 2009. If you want to see how Oz's creator envisioned his own work, here it is.

I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction
even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.

I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening.

Romantic Orientalism was fascinated by the color and excitement of a powerful culture, and nearly always approached its subject with love.

In 1921, Harry Houdini started his own film company called - wait for it - the Houdini Picture Corporation.

Let's say you need a perfectly obedient servant who never gets tired, never needs to be paid, and is virtually indestructible. If you're in a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away, you'll just fly off to the local droid auction and pick up one of those shiny gold models with lovely manners.

If you ordered up a whore here, you'd probably get a theater major doing Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson. I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a Hershey bar?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a whore and a Hershey bar?

Lady, the Faith is here," he stated. "But we must build churches in our hearts, for surely those built in the world have all betrayed us.

According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots.

You know why I've survived in this job, year after year, lousy assignment after lousy assignment, with no counseling whatsoever? Because I have a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. Also because I have no choice.

I only became aware that my eyes had filled with tears when I noticed some commotion in the treetops, far off outside the perimeter wall. I blinked and looked again. There were monkeys out there fighting, screaming and pelting one another with rotten fruit.

He is aware that he feels a vague respect for the woman. Mendoza, at least, had never done the reasonable thing, never settled for less, but held to her one insane passion even as it had dragged her into the flames. Such a valuable quality in a pawn.

We who grew up with 'drop and cover' drills know all too well what wonders science can bring us, and we like to see the guy in the white lab coat suffer a little. Or a lot.

So vast is the shadow cast by the MGM production of 'The Wizard of Oz,' so indelible are its characterizations, so perfect its music, and so assured is its cinematic immortality, that most people think of it as 'The Original.' In fact, it isn't.

In 1916, Universal Studios released the first filmed adaptation of Jules Verne's novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.' Georges Melies made a film by that name in 1907, but, unlike his earlier adaptations of Verne, Melies' version bears no resemblance to the book.

For all its flaws, 'The Hands of Orlac' really is a seminal film, and if you're partial to that particular B-movie subgenre of Demon Body Parts, you really ought to see it.

People who like to fume about the manner in which Disney changed beloved classics are often ignorant of history, not to mention the realities of show business.

England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.

To make a really effective monster you need to begin with a good man, and tell him lies ... Edward

Worldly institutions fail because they require power and gold to operate. Power and gold attract wicked and greedy people. Wicked and greedy people are corrupters and betrayers. Therefore, worldly institutions become corrupt and betrayed ...

True believers aren't real receptive to the idea that what they're telling you is just mythology.

Written and directed by French showman Georges Melies, 'Le Voyage' features one of the most indelible images in cinema history: the wounded Man in the Moon bleeding like a particularly runny Brie, grimacing in pain with a space capsule protruding from his right eye.

The leaf that spreads in the light is the only holiness there is. I haven't found holiness in the faiths of mortals, or in their music, not in their dreams: it's out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don't know what it is, this holiness: but it's there, and it looks at the sky.
Probably though this is some conditioning the Company installed to ensure I'd be a good botanist. Well, I grew up into a good one. Damned good.

I detest flying anywhere. Left to my own devices, I'd never leave my keyboard.

Besides, we weren't made to battle villains, because there weren't any. No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn't see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a grand scale - religions, economic theories, ethnic pride - but we couldn't condemn them for it, as it was in their mortal natures and they were too stupid to know any better.

That is what you're making of the end of your mother's life, child. What will you make of your own?