Best fiction & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“I'm always looking for context in which people tell stories. In "Fight Club" it's these support groups for dying people, and then in "Choke" it's 12-step recovery groups. In one novel it's artists' colonies, in another novel it's a diary form that submariners' wives typically keep so that when their husband comes back from serving on a submarine they have an accounting of their spouse's time. So I'm always looking for, number one, a non-fiction context - because you can tell a more outrageous story if you use a non-fiction form.”

“From about the age of 15 or 16 I'd had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I'd done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it - I wouldn't call it "talent" - though I wondered if I'd ever have the guts to actually commit to it.”

Ifs Writing Done Enough Age Wanted Fiction Talent College Notion Commit Guts Knack

Author:Ben Fountain

“One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.”

People Ifs Thinking Believe Said Film Fiction Perception Shoes Actresses Selling Non Fiction Caricatures Butchers Selling Shoes

Author:Isabelle Huppert

“I really like stories, so in a way it doesn't matter for me if they are real or fiction.”

Ifs Way Real Matter Stories Fiction

Author:Volker Bertelmann

“When I read the script [of Good Kill], it read like a science fiction film. And Andrew [writer/director Andrew Niccol] is known for sci-fi. But when I spoke to him, he said this picture was 100% factual, which blew my mind. I realized then how little I knew about the drone program. And I felt that, if I knew so little about it, there must be others who should be educated about what's going on.”

Ifs Should Mind Littles Said Film Felt Fiction Known Directors Program Science Fiction Scripts I Realized Educated Spokes Sci Fi Andrew Drones Factual

Author:Zoe Kravitz

“Truth is only stranger than fiction if you're a stranger to the truth. Which means you're either a liar or you're fictional.”

Ifs Mean Fiction Truth Is Stranger Liars Stranger Than Fiction

Book:This Isn't What It Looks Like: The Secret Series

Source: This Isn't What It Looks Like: The Secret Series

“Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves.”

Ifs Thinking Enough Character Would Be Turns Fiction Journey New York Circumstances Pages Sitting Very Good Metaphor Heavy Contemporary Mainstream Thinking About Life

Author:Karan Bajaj

“What are the odds that two separate writers, strangers, a thousand miles apart, would each invent fictions in which guys take girls to an esoteric frog lecture on their first date? If that isn't synchronicity, it's something equally as weird.”

Ifs Firsts Two Guy Girl Fiction Thousand Stranger Miles Odds Lectures Frogs Synchronicity Esoteric Thousand Miles First Date Miles Apart

Author:Tom Robbins

“The fiction is like the art, in making stuff out of nothing, in creating a hyper-reality to have an experience. If it's strong enough, and your spell is strong enough, then you become, like, ultra-magnetic and then everything comes to you.”

Ifs Art Enough Reality Strong Stuff Fiction Creating Spells Strong Enough Magnetic Hyper Ultras

Author:Watkin Tudor Jones

“You're in a very nice position as an actor when you're portraying a piece of history that actually happened and portraying characters that actually existed. There's so much more to draw on and your research as an actor becomes much easier than if it's some fiction that you're trying to create a world around and background and history.”

Ifs World Trying Character Actors Fiction Pieces Nice Happened Position Easier Draws Research Backgrounds Very Nice Portraying

Author:Jamie Dornan

“I think that is one of the things that is beautiful about fiction and that you can do through drama. If I was a detective, I could make a certain version of everything we know to be exactly true. And that would have a certain kind of truth value. And there are certain other things that we know that are emotionally true.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Kind Beautiful Certain Values Can Do Fiction Drama Versions Detectives

Author:Liza Johnson

“When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.”

Ifs Writing Kids Lying Fiction Teacher Trouble

Author:Jacqueline Woodson

“It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. "Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.”

Ifs Writing Would Be Political Difficult Fiction Moral Perspective Ironic Realism Compass Absent Suggesting

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“When I read any book, if it's really good I get lost in the writing whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I'm in the story not thinking about who wrote it.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Book Stories Lost Fiction Non Fiction

Author:Jeff Feuerzeig

“What is fiction or cinema if not escape?”

Ifs Fiction Cinema

Author:Jeff Feuerzeig

“I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.”

Ifs Heart I Can Book Hard Happens Felt Fiction Steps Honest Ready Protection Hungry Being Honest Halfway

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“Many Americans have never owned a book. And others have never owned a non-fiction book. Providing them with a 300-page paperback would get them started, maybe. And even if it didn't, at least they'd own that one. So that's a serious problem.”

Ifs Book Problem Fiction Serious Pages Providing Non Fiction

Author:James W. Loewen

“To me experimental fiction ultimately is about the experiment and I'm not interested in experiments for their own sake, and if anything I've always steered a bit clear of that kind of thing, because it seems gimmicky to play around with text rather than do the work of telling a story and creating characters.”

Ifs Kind Play Character Stories Seems Bits Fiction Clear Creating Sake Experiments Not Interested Creating Characters

Author:Steve Erickson

“In fiction, it's as if you enter a dream world that you created, but your characters have their own free will. They don't do what you want them to do - they get into trouble, do drugs, fight over petty things, and do outrageous things that you wouldn't want your children to do. In other words, you can only provide the background, the seeds - in my case the background of the Vietnamese refugee.”

“As for whether genre considerations influence what I write, they don't at all, but I might sell more books if they did. The Night Journal is a hodge-podge of historical fiction, western, mystery, and contemporary domestic drama. It doesn't settle into a specific market, reviewers have a hard time describing it, and sometimes it gets classified weirdly in bookstores. But from a writer's standpoint, I like that it's hard to categorize.”

“What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.”

“Something like 'Alien,' that was not so easy. If there's any genre I wouldn't mind not having to do anymore, it would be science fiction. It's just all to do with the toys, and there's so much hanging around.”

Ifs Mind Would Be Easy Fiction Science Fiction Aliens Genre Toys Hanging Around

Author:John Hurt

“I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good for me.”

Ifs Thinking Doe Stills Fiction

Author:George Saunders

“My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it's like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Should Writing Trying Kind Persons Stories Bigs Might Mother Asks Energy Fiction Plans Danger Approach Jokes Notion Cards Bores Insulting Writing Fiction

Author:George Saunders

“With fiction, and also with nonfiction that you can take your time doing, you have a much better chance of reaching across the divide and connecting with somebody who is opposed to you on some things. They're opposed to you on one axis, which is politics, but if you go over the axis called puppies, you might find some common ground.”

Ifs Might Chance Common Fiction Reaching Divides Nonfiction Connecting Puppy Doing You Common Ground Axes Take Your Time

Author:George Saunders

“I love the resource of the Internet. I use it all the time. Anything I'm writing - for example, if I'm writing a scene about Washington D.C. and I want to know where this monument is, I can find it right away, I can get a picture of the monument, it just makes your life so much easier, especially if you're writing fiction. You can check stuff so much quicker, and I think that's all great for writers.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Want Writing I Can Use Stuff Fiction Example Internet Easier Scene Resources Checks Monument Writing Fiction

Author:Dave Barry

“I would love to take control of the entire universe and for five years you give every movie the same widespread distribution no matter what movie and see if there's a real discrepancy between people coming to see science-fiction films or superhero films. I seriously bet there would be no discernible difference.”

“A lot of the despair we feel watching the news every day flows from our sense of helplessness, and as a fiction writer you get to control things, if only on the page. You get to run the show. You can right wrongs, bring departed loved ones back to life, even take vengeance on God, if that's your thing.”

Ifs Feels Shows Running Fiction Despair News Pages Flow Loved Ones Vengeance Helplessness Fiction Writers Departed

Author:Ron Currie Jr.

“I'm definitely excited by big ideas, both in what I write and what I read. Most days, reality is so mind-numbingly dull that I don't understand why someone would write strictly realistic stories, given the almost limitless freedom fiction provides. I don't see the point of making believe if you're not going to actually make believe: hang your ass out in the wind, push at every boundary, make almost unreasonable demands on your reader's willingness to suspend disbelief. This is dangerous, and prone to failure, but that's part of what makes it fun.”

“I make non-fiction partly because I'm not that good of a writer. My talent, if I have any, is in balancing, capturing and directing reality, rather than creating scenarios.”

Ifs Reality Fiction Talent Creating Scenarios Non Fiction

Author:Robert Greene

“I just think there's something in the non-fiction form that allows you to see things clearly, if you're patient.”

Ifs Thinking Form Fiction Patient Non Fiction

Author:Robert Greene

“In a democracy in the 20th and 21st century, if you can't base your fiction upon ordinary people and the issues that engage them, then you are reduced to writing about spectacular unreal people. You know, James Bond or something, and you cook up adventures.”

People Ifs Knows Writing Fiction Democracy Issues Century Adventure Ordinary Cooks 21st Century Ordinary People Spectacular Unreal

Author:John Updike

“I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.”

Ifs Thinking Mean Important Stories Jobs Fiction Structure Tiny Why Not Epic Fiction Writers

Author:Colum McCann

“If I write a paragraph and I don't get a certain lift from it, if I don't feel connected to it emotionally, then it's dead to me. When I'm reading other fiction writers, if I don't get any emotional investment from the writer, if it's just intellectual or clever - you know, most writing that passes as deep is just clever - I don't feel any connection.”

Ifs Knows Feels Writing Certain Reading Fiction Emotional Intellectual Connections Investment Connected Clever Lifts Paragraph Fiction Writers Emotional Investment

Author:Oscar Hijuelos

“I think a more complex idea of fiction - and the human self's relationship with the world - emerges when we abandon this philistine equation between literature and liberalism and human goodness, and pay some attention to the darker, ambiguous, and often muddled energies and motivations that shape a work of art. If we do this, we can appreciate a writer like Céline or Gottfried Benn without worrying whether they conform to existing notions of political incorrectness.”

“It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.”

Ifs Feels Order Names Fiction Events Credit Non Fiction

Author:Nicholson Baker

“I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.'”

Ifs Thinking Mind Art My Own Fiction Opinion Watches Historical Series Complexity Works Of Art Historical Fiction Good Work Richness Bothered Embedded Delivering

Author:Tony Kushner

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