Best fiction & materials Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.”

Way Writing Firsts Looks Stories Happens Fiction Strange Materials Beast Observers Fiction Writers

Book:Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

Source: Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

“History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.”

People Humans Facts Fiction Example Materials Behavior Research Novelists Japan Factories Human Behavior Gloves Raw Materials Courtesans

Author:Amy Waldman

“In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.”

Has Beens Film Fiction Materials Directors Documentaries

Book:Hitchcock

Source: Hitchcock

“It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.”

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

“In, 1950, at the age, 19 I dropped out of St. George William College in Montreal, as it then was, and sailed for England on the Franconia. Foolishly, no arrogantly, believing I could put Canada and its picayune problems behind me, never dreaming it would become the raw material of most of my fiction and non-fiction. Or that I would care so deeply about its surviving intact.”

Believe Problem Dream Care Age Behinds Fiction College Materials England Canada Surviving Non Fiction Raw Materials Montreal

Author:Mordecai Richler

“I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.”

Thinking Writing Mean Character Stories Fiction Fantasy Materials Periods Science Fiction Developing Novelists Science Fiction And Fantasy

Author:Roger Zelazny

“Blade Runner is a rare science fiction movie so full of material that pages can be written about it without scratching the surface. A review like this can provide little more than an overview. A detailed exploration of the movie, its style, and its mysteries requires dedication that only someone immersed in Blade Runner lore can provide.”

Littles Fiction Written Mystery Style Materials Pages Science Fiction Surface Exploration Reviews Dedication Runners Blades Blade Runner Science Fiction Movie Overview Scratching The Surface

Author:James Berardinelli

“I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.”

Way Want Writing Trying Firsts Kind States Hands Seems Reading Interesting Fiction Steps Achieve Materials Computer Creating Mess Unconscious Most Interesting Non Fiction

Author:Jennifer Egan

“I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.”

Writing Trying Littles Results Fiction Materials Fit Packages Tidy Writing Short

Author:Susan Choi

“My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.”

Ifs Character Past Fiction Careers Novel Events Materials Mark Historical Sheer Remembrance Historical Novels Ballast

Book:The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

Source: The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

“To only call Wizards, Aliens, and Starships engaging would be a real understatement--it is a delightful, funny, and immensely interesting romp through science and fiction. From candlepower to teleportation, all the way to the fate of the cosmos in the span of a googol years, this is a cornucopia of teachable material. It is also a reminder of the simple thrill of applying science to the world around us, real or imagined. A new classic.”

World Way Years Real Would Be Simple Interesting Fiction Fate Materials Aliens Classic Cosmos Thrill Delightful Engaging Reminders Wizards Understatement Teachable

Author:Caleb Scharf

“My father's death when I was eighteen and his struggles as a Jewish immigrant provided me with the raw material, but for a long time I went from painting to fiction and then finally to poetry before I could find the right way of telling this story.”

Way Long Stories Father Fiction Struggle Painting Materials Long Time Immigrants Poetry Is Right Way Eighteen Raw Materials

Author:Philip Schultz

“Being a fan of science fiction, I collect a lot of science fiction art work and so if you go to my house there's like a library and you just geek out on science fiction material. A lot of the colony worlds specifically are built as a melting pot of different societies, because the world is at a point where there are only two zones that are left inhabitable.”

Ifs World Art Two Different House Left Fiction Fans Materials Built Science Fiction Library Zone Pot Geek Melting Colony Melting Pot

Author:Len Wiseman

“And for the authentical truth of either person or actions, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth? Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions; material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy.”

Want Persons Soul Action Natural Poor Fiction Virtue Subjects Materials Limits Tragedy Contrary Instruction Elegant Limbs Envious Deflection

Book:The Works of George Chapman: Plays

Source: The Works of George Chapman: Plays

“When I'm reading for my own pleasure, I read things other than history or archival material. I read a lot of fiction. I'm very fond of mysteries.”

Reading My Own Pleasure Fiction Mystery Materials

Author:David McCullough

“You have to get inside the people you are writing about. You have to go below the surface. And that's to a very large degree what all writers are doing - they're trying to get below the surface. Whether it's in fiction or poetry or writing history and biography. Some people make that possible because they write wonderful letters and diaries. And you have to sort of go where the material is.”

People Writing Trying Fiction Wonderful Materials Degrees Letters Surface Biographies Diaries Below The Surface Writing History

Author:David McCullough

“What I'm doing is exploring things. This is why I'm a fiction writer rather than an essayist or a politician or whatever. I just gather material and find a scenario, and see where it takes me. I don't have a plan.”

Fiction Plans Materials Politician Take Me Exploring Scenarios Fiction Writers Essayists

Author:T.C. Boyle

“I'm aware of narrating certain experiences as they happen or obliterating those experiences with narrative and then those stories - not the experiences themselves - might become material for art. This kind of transformation shows up a lot in 10:04 because the book tracks the transposition of fact into fiction in the New Yorker stor”

Kind Art Book Facts Stories Shows Might Happens Certain Fiction Materials Transformation Track Narrative New Yorkers

Author:Ben Lerner

“The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.”

Writing Hard Stories Age Remember Used Found Memories Fiction Steps Materials Tales Used To Be Elusive Intricate Writing Fiction

Author:Marina Warner

“One of the things I've been talking about with my critical writing and my own work is that these movies are seen differently in a theatrical space. It's very important to me. I edit films to be seen theatrically, like fiction material I've worked on like Listen Up Phillip or other documentaries.”

Writing Important Film My Own Space Fiction Talking Materials Critical Documentaries Edits Theatrical

Author:Robert Greene

“Fiction stymies me with its possibility. I can't see the bottom and I freeze, cling to the side, or just choke. In nonfiction, particularly that which takes personal narrative for its primary topic, I have a finite space and a finite amount of material. I can't fabricate material, I can only shape and burrow into it.”

I Can Sides Space Fiction Possibility Materials Amount Shapes Bottom Primaries Narrative Nonfiction Topics Finite Choke Freeze Fabricate

Author:Melissa Febos

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