Only in about 2007 or so did it become clear to me that games could stand proudly beside other storytelling mediums, and that's when I became more, shall we say, evangelistic in my position. Prior to that, I don't know how enthusiastically I would have admitted that I game.

Tom Bissell

Categorized in : Stand Me Know Game

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.

Tom Bissell

reading book thinking

We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.

Tom Bissell

games children school

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

Tom Bissell

wish doe writing

Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer-so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.

Tom Bissell

imitation seductive impossible

To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.

Tom Bissell

magic ifs believe

Fun is not the same thing as fulfillment.

Tom Bissell

fulfillment fun

When I play too many video games I begin to feel chubby-minded, caffeinated, bad.

Tom Bissell

video games play

Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.

Tom Bissell

video girlfriend games

An artist can respect the backfield of fact before which every human being stands and choose not to address those facts.

Tom Bissell

addresses artist facts

To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

Tom Bissell

magic stories believe

[M]y first published book had just appeared in stores. The last year of my life-the year of finishing it, editing it, and seeing it through its various page-proof passes-ranks among the most unnerving of my young life. It has not felt good, or freeing. It has felt nerve-shreddingly disquieting. Publication simply allows one that much more to worry about. This cannot be said to aspiring writers often or sternly enough. Whatever they carry within themselves they believe publication cures will not, I can all but guarantee, be cured. You just wind up with new diseases.

Tom Bissell

editing believe book

Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom.

Tom Bissell

opinion reader hands

Games tell stories best when they're elliptical and ambiguous and there's a sense of roaming and freedom.

Tom Bissell

best tell freedom games

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

Tom Bissell

how think want work

I have an immensely understanding partner who does something creative herself, and we both need a lot of time alone. I structure my life around getting my work done, first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. That's the only way I've been able to do it.

Tom Bissell

alone work time life

I like reading books with both hands, with my heart pumping, with blood on the page. So I'm interested in people who make stuff, and I'm interested in the lives that make the text. To read a book or watch a movie any other way, to me, personally, feels like a waste of time and misapplication of energy.

Tom Bissell

me heart time people

I view myself as a fiction writer who just happens to write nonfiction. I think I look at the world through a fiction-writer's eyes.

Tom Bissell

eyes myself look world

The average action game doesn't much traffic in thematic grandiosity, but the BioShock games are different.

Tom Bissell

game traffic different action

The underwater businessman philosopher Andrew Ryan was BioShock's unforgettable villain.

Tom Bissell

ryan underwater unforgettable villain

I guess I would say that most of what I've learned about storytelling derives from novels and short stories. I cannot think of a novel or story, or a novelist or story writer, who thinks in terms of three-act structure.

Tom Bissell

short say story think