“A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters, as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.” CharacterFictionNovelFateFailingExerciseConcernedMereNarrativeInteriorsAdaptationDecorationInconvenientGreat Novels Author:Richard Schickel
“Fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.” MayFictionExerciseCapacityImaginativeIdentification Book:When I Was A Child I Read Books Source: When I Was A Child I Read Books
“In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people's lives, the choices they make and how that works out through time, what they have done and left undone, what they tell me and what they keep secret and silent, what they lie about and what they confess, what they are proud of and what shames them, what they hope for and what they fear. The source of my fiction is the desire to understand people and their choices through time.” PeopleDoneEnoughUsedLyingDesireChoicesLeftSecretFictionTroubleSourceProudExerciseCatShameSilentWork OutNineCuriousFascinatedListenersUndoneRough TimesAvidNine Lives Author:Marge Piercy
“But there are no institutions on earth which enable each separate person to have a hand in the exercise of Power, for Power is command, and everyone cannot command. Sovereignty of the people is, therefore, nothing but a fiction, and one which must in the long run prove destructive of individual liberties.” PeoplePersonsLongHandsRunningEarthIndividualFictionLibertyExerciseProveInstitutionsCommandDestructiveLong RunsSovereigntyIndividual Liberty Book:On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth Source: On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth
“I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.” PeopleIfsStatesUnitedNumbersFictionUnited StatesExampleExerciseMythStorytelling Author:Yann Martel
“A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction.” TryingKindStoriesDreamFictionExerciseTitlesSubconsciousEvoke Author:Dan Chaon
“Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.” IfsThinkingWayWantNeedsWritingStoriesMightHappensAbleFictionCasesNovelCreativeMastersExerciseSouthFishesSentencesBiologyNeglectCopiesSouth AfricaPublishNon FictionCopyingBodyguardPaleontologyButtocksFieldworkHamstringsCoetzee Author:Marlene van Niekerk
“I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination. Part of what I do is let the stuff I read about meld with what I have experienced.” ThinkingStuffImaginationFictionExerciseEmpathetic Author:Jim Shepard