"I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead"
About this Quote
The intent is quietly rebellious. Williams isn’t confessing laziness so much as rejecting the prestige of the technical manual. "Quickly got bored" is doing double duty: it’s self-deprecation that disarms criticism, and it’s a critique of a culture that treats mechanism as the highest form of understanding. In his formulation, the more exact you get, the less alive the thing feels. The fairy tale becomes a workaround for communicating how something works without embalming it.
Context matters: Williams is the sort of author-illustrator associated with puzzle-box storytelling (Masquerade is the obvious touchstone), where the reader’s attention is the engine. A treatise would put the author in charge; a tale makes the audience complicit. "Scientific" keeps the whimsy from floating away into pure fantasy, while "fairy tale" keeps the science from hardening into pedagogy. The subtext is a manifesto for narrative as a delivery system for knowledge: meaning sticks when it’s smuggled in, not when it’s announced.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Williams, Kit. (2026, January 16). I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/
Chicago Style
Williams, Kit. "I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2026.


