Best fiction & knows Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.”

Thinking Knows Writing Fiction Research Historical Lazy Historical Fiction

Author:Sarah Dessen

“There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.”

Knows Kind Film Fiction Science Fiction Crap Mindless Abomination

Author:Ray Bradbury

“There are certain kinds of people who write science fiction. I think a lot of us married late. A lot of us are mama's boys. I lived at home until I was 27. But most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.”

People Thinking Knows Writing Kind Home Certain Fiction Boys Fields Grew Late Married Grew Up Science Fiction Mama Mama's Boy

Author:Ray Bradbury

“I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.”

Knows Writing Wells Mean I Can Ends My Own Fiction Authority Details Surface My Own Life

Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I don't write fiction but I do write narrative; I write memoirs that I treat like stories, so whenever I'm using somebody I actually know as a model, I am submitting them to the agenda of a storyteller, and I feel free to do what I want.”

Knows Want Feels Writing Stories Fiction Models Treats Memoir Narrative Agendas Storyteller

Author:Vivian Gornick

“Some people say they're gathering DNA. Perhaps they're gathering it for the future when the human race is stronger or weaker, who knows. That's science fiction and mere speculation.”

People Knows Humans Race Fiction Stronger Science Fiction Mere Human Race Dna Gathering Speculation

Author:Alex Jones

“I love science fiction but I don't like fantastic [cinema]. For example, if you have a magical ring and you can explode the world with it. What are we talking about? You know, it's not interesting. I don't like Lord of the Rings. Even Star Wars, for me, I don't understand this kind of story. But Alien, because the rules of the game are very precise, it could happen. I love science fiction. I have an idea about robots in the future.”

“I say at the very end of "Winter Journal" that I do dream about my father often. I think I have a tremendous compassion for him, which has grown over the years. A certain kind of pity for him also in that he was so unrealised as a human being, so dogged, and so shut-off from people in many ways. You know, I've been writing another book, and it's another non-fiction autobiographical work, kind of a compliment to "Winter Journal", and it's just finished.”

People Thinking Knows Way Writing Years Humans Kind Book Ends Dream Certain Father Human Beings Fiction Compassion Winter Finished Pity Compliment Journal Non Fiction

Author:Paul Auster

“Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that.”

People Knows Feels Said Film Strong Waiting Fiction Worry Minutes Smart Reactions Pulp

Author:Eli Roth

“I did not always know I would be a writer. Until I had a room of my own, I did not write much at all - no more than any other child who read a lot of books. I began to write fiction and poetry when I first had a room that was truly my own with a door that shut and some measure, however fragile, of privacy.”

Knows Writing Firsts Children Book Would Be My Own Rooms Fiction Doors Privacy Fragile

Author:Marge Piercy

“We don't really know how technology will affect narrative. That's the question. See, people used to say that the novel is going to die, but they would never say that movies will die with it, when in fact all forms depend on the narrative. I think if one of them fails, the others are going to fail as well. Maybe this will happen to both forms, and maybe movies will take a totally different direction with fiction.”

People Ifs Thinking Knows Wells Different Facts Happens Form Used Dies Fiction Technology Novel Know How Failing Depends Narrative Different Directions

Author:Don DeLillo

“Human lives seldom conform to the conventions of fiction. Chekhov says that it is in the beginnings and endings of stories that we are most tempted to lie. I know what he means, and I agree.”

Knows Humans Mean Stories Lying Fiction Agree Human Life Conventions Conform Tempted Chekhov Beginnings And Endings

Book:Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

“The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.”

Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

“Characters more or less present themselves to me. I don't know their origins. I think if I did, if I seemed to myself to fabricate them, I could not induce suspension of disbelief in myself in the way writing fiction requires.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Way Writing Character Fiction Disbelief Writing Fiction Suspension Fabricate Suspension Of Disbelief

Author:Marilynne Robinson

“One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.”

Knows Doe Fiction

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.”

Knows Way Feels Writing Kind Moving Lines Pleasure Levels Secret Fiction Focus Capable Woods Moving Forward Rough Builder Cathedrals Caterpillars Rough Drafts

Author:Karen Russell

“I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.”

Thinking Knows Feels Writing Years Enough Fiction Ready Borders Nonfiction Writing Nonfiction

Author:William T. Vollmann

“The fiction I tend to like is nothing like my own work. I like the kind of writing that shows me things I don't know about, and what I don't know about is the everyday, normal world.”

Knows World Writing Kind Shows My Own Fiction Normal Everyday Show Me

Author:Jim Woodring

“There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.”

Knows Way Hard Seems Winning Fiction Strange Hard Work Journalist Prize Unbelievable

Author:Jennifer Egan

“Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it's doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors.”

“You should spend more time with your families; write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know - fiction.”

Knows Should Writing Wanted Fiction Novel Administration Fearless Our Family More Time Reporters

Author:Stephen Colbert

“The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.”

“The problem with kitsch is that it is all too profound, manipulating deep libidinal and ideological forces, while true art knows how to remain at the surface, how to subtract it's subject from it's deepest context of historical reality. The same goes for contemporary art, where we often encounter brutal attempts to return to the Real, to remind the spectator or reader that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from a sweet dream.”

“With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.”

People Knows Should Has Beens Character Seems Understanding Fiction Liberty Novel Taken Events Historical Dramatic Poetic License Accord Latitude Historical Novels Poetic License

Author:Nicholas Meyer

“I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.”

Knows Believe Wells Bigs Lying Differences Fiction Honest Involved Don't Believe Like Me Filmmaker Organized Documentaries

Author:Peter Greenaway

“Science fiction, as I mentioned before, writes about what is neither impossible nor possible; the fact is that, when the question of possibility comes up in science fiction, the author can only reply that nobody knows. We haven't been there yet. We haven't discovered that yet. Science fiction hasn't happened.”

Knows Writing Facts Fiction Impossible Happened Havens Possibility Science Fiction Come Up Nobody Knows

Book:To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction

Source: To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction

“I have confused ideas of deity, heavily influenced by mind-altering years of reading science fiction, that do not often trouble me, but one thing I know for certain, and have known since the age of five or six, is that I really can't stand the God of Abraham. In fact, I consider him to constitute the pattern to which every true asshole I have ever known in my life has pretty well conformed.”

Knows Years Mind Wells Ideas Facts Age Certain Reading Fiction Known Five Trouble One Thing Six Science Fiction Patterns Confused Deities Abraham Very True

Author:Michael Chabon

“[W]hen you're shooting a doc, you're trying to class it up because you can. You know, you're trying to make this feel like cinematic experience. And when you're doing fiction you're trying to do the opposite thing you're trying to take this very artificial experience this very artificial experience and make it feel real and visceral.”

Knows Feels Trying Real Fiction Class Opposites Shooting Artificial Visceral Cinematic Hens

Author:John Hyams

“Science fiction fans are the smartest fans in television. They just are. They're just so smart, and they know so much detail and information. They're a part of the story and they inform your character, as well. We all listen to the fans, and we love their feedback and the attention they give us.”

Knows Giving Wells Character Stories Attention Fiction Fans Information Television Smart Science Fiction Details Feedback

Author:Azita Ghanizada

“I've got things I have to do in fiction to sort of register my existence, before I kick the bucket, but it will never be my living and I know it. Plus it never moved fast enough for me and lacked cut and thrust. I need to be in the real show.”

Knows Needs Real Enough Shows Existence Fiction Cutting Moved Kicks Plus Thrust Register Buckets

Author:William Monahan

“Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know."”

Knows Should Writing Stories Fiction Grace Opposites Should I Outlines Workshops

Author:Andre Dubus

“How do I know the past is not a fiction conceived to reconcile the difference between my state of mind and the present.”

Knows Mind States Past Differences Fiction State Of Mind Reconcile

Author:Douglas Adams

“You've got the people you know, which are problematic. Always. They're rich but they're also real people living their lives alongside you. Then you've got the people that you make-up completely, who are often missing a dimension if they don't have some reference to real people. So strangers exist in this in-between space, where in not knowing them, you are creating a fiction for them, even in passing, but at the same time, there they are, with their actual bodies and their actual clothes. It's totally enticing.”

People Ifs Knows Real Body Space Fiction Knowing Rich Missing Creating Clothes Stranger Passing Passings Dimensions Not Knowing Enticing

Author:Miranda July

“You know, every year 'Torchwood' has become something a little different than it was before. It's still sci-fi, but it doesn't just deal with spaceships and aliens all the time, because we've done that. Our science fiction is more psychological.”

Knows Years Littles Stills Different Done Deals Fiction Science Fiction Psychological Aliens Sci Fi Spaceships Torchwood

Author:John Barrowman

“As an actress, I think I really understand that stage where you think you are picking reality in order to feed the fiction, but it happens to be the contrary. It's the fiction that suddenly feeds your reality. And you don't know how it has been done. That's the kind of magical transposition that is art.”

Thinking Knows Kind Has Beens Art Done Reality Happens Order Fiction Know How Stage Actresses Contrary

Author:Ludivine Sagnier

“We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.”

Ifs Knows Book Ideas Sometimes Facts Chance Fiction Crazy Complicated Worthy Obsession Decent

Author:Meg Wolitzer

“I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.”

Knows Want Persons Fiction

Author:Jamaica Kincaid

“Dogwalker is a book of fiction, with characters based on the types of people who truly exist in the world. I've seen them and know them - some of them I know really well. Although the stories are sometimes gritty and unsettling, my hope is that in the end they hit a positive note.”

People Knows World Wells Book Ends Sometimes Character Stories Fiction Type Notes

Author:Arthur Bradford

“If a reader believes that everything in nonfiction or history is just objectively true, I don't really know what to tell them, except that at least in fiction, the choice of what perspective and bias to tell a given story from - which is always a deliberate choice - is foregrounded and clear.”

Ifs Knows Believe Stories Choices Given Fiction Clear Perspective Reader Nonfiction Bias Deliberate

Author:Kathleen Rooney

“Fiction is more dangerous than nonfiction because it can seduce better. I think we all know this, know that deeper truths can be approached in fiction than in fact. There are risks for the reader, because after reading certain books you find you have changed irreversibly. There are risks for writers: in China, now, and Ethiopia and other countries right now, writers face real persecution.”

“We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction itself is likely to produce more light.”

“I suppose most writers are following Twain's advice to tackle what they know, and my own readings habits drew me to writers who seemed to be writing honestly from their own experiences, whether they presented it in the guise of fiction or not.”

Knows Writing Reading My Own Fiction Advice Habit Following Honestly Guise Reading Habits

Author:Kevin Keck

“I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of.”

Thinking Knows Writing Long Film Behinds Fiction Science Fiction Historical Writing History

Author:William Monahan

“I love really exploring... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great.”

People Knows Way Mean Real Country Stories Fiction Class Military Example Identity Drama Exciting Science Fiction Who We Are Cop Exploring Real You Good Science Fiction Stories

Author:Ethan Hawke

“Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.”

“We translated the script together with them. And during the process of translation, they rewrote the scripts. They put a lot into it. They made it their own. There are names of plants or chants or certain rites and everything that you cannot come across it in a movie. You know, you cannot learn about them casually. So the film doesn't have value in the ethnographical, anthropological. It's fiction.”

Knows Made Together Film Certain Values Names Process Fiction Plant Scripts Made It Translations Rite

Author:Ciro Guerra

“I grew up reading crime fiction mysteries, true crime - a lot of true crime - and it is traditionally a male dominated field from the outside, but from the inside what we know, those of us who read it, is that women buy the most crime fiction, they are by far the biggest readers of true crime, and there's a voracious appetite among women for these stories, and I know I feel it - since I was quite small I wanted to go to those dark places.”

Knows Feels Stories Wanted Reading Dark Fiction Mystery Crime Fields Grew Reader Grew Up Males Appetite Crime Fiction Dark Places

Author:Megan Abbott

“All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore.”

Knows Feels Writing Character Enjoy Lines Fiction Fans Remains This Day

Author:Naomi Novik

“While the film [Hide and seek] is a work of fiction, I know many people, not just women, who have felt the way my character feels in the film, a certain kind of invisibility. I am grateful that my parents, Bev Umehara and Russell Chang, instilled a healthy sense of self-esteem in me from an early age.”

People Knows Way Feels Kind Self Character Age Film Certain Felt Parent Fiction Self Esteem Healthy Grateful Esteem Sense Of Self Invisibility I Am Grateful Hide And Seek

Author:Garth Kravits

“That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.”

Knows Character Stories Order Fiction Know How Poet Creating Structure Developing Narrative Fiction Writers Narrative Structure

Author:Edward Hirsch

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