Worldbuilding Quotes

The Cloud Roads has wildly original worldbuilding, diverse and engaging characters, and a thrilling adventure plot. It's that rarest of fantasies: fresh and surprising, with a story that doesn't go where ten thousand others have gone before. I can't wait for my next chance to visit the Three Worlds! ~ N.K. Jemisin

I enjoy worldbuilding very much. I generally start with an approximation. With 'Flesh and Spirit' and 'Breath and Bone,' because I was thinking of a world on the brink of a dark age, I began with the sense of Roman Britain. But I purposely set the geography to match something other than Britain - which has been overdone. ~ Carol Berg

I think the notion of worldbuilding is a failure of literary sophistication. ~ Michael Moorcock

Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding - the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame. ~ Ann Leckie

Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana' is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. It's beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite. ~ David B. Coe

Also, worldbuilding touches all aspects of your story. It touches plot and character as well. If you don't know the culture your character comes from, how can you know what he's really like? You must know your characters on a much deeper level than you would if you just shrugged your way into a cookie cutter fantasy world. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

The planet of people lives in three shifts: we'd be too crowded if we all went to sleep in the evening and woke up in the morning at the same time. So a third of us live in the morning, a third of us live in the evening and a third of us live at night. Europe never closes all its eyes. ~ Dmitry Glukhovsky

The key to good worldbuilding is leaving out most of what you create. You, as the author, had damn well better know the where all that dragon food comes from, but that doesn't mean that I, as a reader, want to read a five thousand word essay about you explaining it to me. I don't need to see the math, but I can tell by the details you provide whether or not you've thought these things through to their logical conclusions. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader's ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn't there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn't possible, & if it was the results wouldn't be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder's victim, & makes us very afraid. ~ M. John Harrison

The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they're grounded in solid human emotion and experience. ~ Brandon Sanderson

You can't work in the library without going into the Old Levels," said Mirelle somberly. "At least some of the time. I wouldn't be keen on going to some parts of the Library, myself."
Lirael listened, wondering what they were talking about. The Great Library of the Clayr was enormous, but she had never heard of the Old Levels.
She knew the general layout well. The Library was shaped like a nautilus shell, a continuous tunnel that wound down into the mountain in an ever-tightening spiral. This main spiral was an enormously long, twisting ramp that took you from the high reaches of the mountain down past the level of the valley floor, several thousand feet below.
Off the main spiral, there were countless other corridors, rooms, halls, and strange chambers. Many were full of the Clayr's written records, mainly documenting the prophesies and visions of many generations of seers. But they also contained books and papers from all over the Kingdom. Books of magic and mystery, knowledge both ancient and new. Scrolls, maps, spells, recipes, inventories, stories, true tales, and Charter knew what else.
In addition to all these written works, the Great Library also housed other things. There were old armories within it, containing weapons and armor that had not been used for centuries but still stayed bright and new. There were rooms full of odd paraphernalia that no one now knew how to use. There were chambers where dressmakers' dummies stood fully clothed, displ ~ Garth Nix

Ha-ha!' the fox laughed. '*Just* stories, you say, as if stories mean nothing? Stories are the stuff that sticks the world together. Stories are the mud from which we're all made. The power to imagine stories is the power to remake the world as we dream it. ~ C. Alexander London