“Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.” WorldWritingBookFactsNovelDoubtReadyReaderAssumingPreparedNonfictionBe PreparedLegion Book:High Tide in Tucson Source: High Tide in Tucson
“In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.” ThinkingWritingTryingMeanFactsNovelWho You AreAbout YourselfAutobiographyConcealedOne Deep Author:Robert Penn Warren
“In my view the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels, direct films and put on plays tend to read too many novels, watch too many films and go to too many plays.” PeopleWritingPlayFactsFilmResultsViewsWatchesNovelCreativeDirectCreative WorkArtificiality Author:Will Self
“My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.” DoeBookFactsMotherLinesNovelMysteryAdventureDadMurderMy DadObsessionSpyGrandmaMachoMy GrandmaMurder MysteriesAdventure BooksShoguns Author:Christopher Bollen
“I've read in many a novel, that unless they've souls that grovel-- Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls.” SoulFactsHomeNovelFolksHallsMarbleDreary Book:Fly leaves, by C.S.C. Source: Fly leaves, by C.S.C.
“Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object.” IfsWorldWayWritingTryingArtFactsStoriesEarthFormArtistOrderForceNaturalBehindsVisionNovelCreationObjectsPlanetsChaosDrivenImpulseAppropriateScreenplaysPlanet Earth Author:Robert Olen Butler
“Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating a piece of crude, contemptible, adolescent, anti-American wickedness, when, in fact, he would have succeeded, as prophetic sentry, where Orwell failed.” WritingYearsHas BeensFactsPresidentNovelPiecesWickednessAccusedCrudePropheticFuturisticSatiristAnti-americanPresident Reagan Book:Conversations with Philip Roth Source: Conversations with Philip Roth
“Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there - that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.” GivingWellsFactsMightFeltQualityNovelHeardEmotionalDramaPagesEarsDeedsMoodAurasInexplicableHigh Quality Book:Not Under Forty Source: Not Under Forty
“My current novel, Pallas, is all about that culture war - in fact it's been called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Sagebrush Rebellion - and yet what I hear all too often from libertarians is that they don't read fiction.” WarFactsCultureFictionNovelCurrentsLibertarianRebellionTomsUnclesCabinsUncle Tom Author:L. Neil Smith