“Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.” WorldShouldBookRealFactsFictionNovelAuthorityReal WorldJudged Author:Akhil Sharma
“There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.” MindBookPayFictionNovelHigherComplimentNon Fiction Author:Jon Weisman
“It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.” WritingFactsFeelingsFictionNovelHigherEasierLicenseNon Fiction Author:Jon Weisman
“Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic.” LiteratureWishFictionNovelCrimeCrime Fiction Author:Elliott Colla
“In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising.” ThinkingTermNumbersFictionNovelEnvironmentExampleMinesRisingKimArcticComplementStanleyTobiasThinking About The Future Author:Annalee Newitz
“I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way.” WayWritingFirstsEndsUseMy OwnFictionTeachNovelWrittenTechniqueNot SureLove To Read Author:Porochista Khakpour
“The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write.” ThinkingFeelsWritingBookIdeasCertainLevelsFictionNovelFocusEffectsSucceedPressureVariousFewerUps & DownsExperimentationNineteenNeatness Author:Chad Harbach
“The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.” GivingFirstsStoriesFictionNovelSawsWrittenGrewGiving UpBiggerResponsibleRussiaShort StoryTimingDoomedConstellationsHindsightFortuitous Author:Anthony Marra
“I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate.” ThinkingWayKindDifferentEndsReadingForceFeltForgetFictionNovelEffectsNew YorkEmotionalFlowerHairSceneShotsDoctorsTrainPatientGoodbyeNever ForgetUnfortunateCowboySaying GoodbyeDinosaursCanyonsCumulativeDifferent ExperiencesChekhovHawthorne Author:Adam Ross
“Not a lot of contemporary fiction is written about brothers and sisters. Salinger's Franny and Zooey was an inspiration for me. In Franny and Zooey, the sister gets in trouble and the brother comes to help her out. But I wanted to make sure that in my novel the sister had more to do than lie around on a sofa muttering, which is what Franny does for two-thirds of Salinger's novel.” DoeTwoHelpingInspirationWantedLyingFictionNovelWrittenTroubleBrotherThirdsContemporaryBrothers And SistersContemporary FictionSofasMutteringSalinger Author:K. M. Soehnlein
“Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.” ThinkingWantFeelsWritingStoriesDifferencesFictionNovelMagicMysteryHistoricalHistorical FictionHistorical Novels Author:Chang-Rae Lee
“I was reading Raymond Chandler very much with the feminist eye. In six of his seven novels, it's the woman who presents herself in a sexual way, who is the main bad person. And then you start reading more fiction, whether crime fiction or straight fiction, it's just bad girls trying to make good boys do bad things, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman that thou gavest me made me do it, Adam says to God.” WayTryingPersonsMadeEyeGirlReadingFictionBoysNovelCrimeSixSevenFeministBad ThingsAdamCrime FictionAdam And EveBad GirlGood BoyReading More Author:Sara Paretsky
“Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me as historical documents. Cabet [Icaria's founder and author of the utopian novel, Travels in Icaria], is writing in the 1830s, and his idea of the perfect society reveals a lot about his time. But his book is uniquely bad.” WritingBookIdeasFunPerfectFictionNovelHistoricalBoringFascinatingFoundersDocumentsUtopianPerfect Society Author:Christine Jennings
“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.” PeopleIfsStoriesUseFormArtistFightingNumbersFictionStepsSupportNovelWifeGroupsDyingHusbandClubsRecoveryServingSpouseDiariesNon FictionOutrageousChokeAccountingColonySubmarinesSupport Groups12 Step Recovery12 Step Author:Chuck Palahniuk
“I'm grateful for the likes of Kundera, Murnane, Markson, Berger, and, in his recent work, Coetzee. But no matter how celebrated they are, critics still consider them askance. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a great novel, but it got quite a critical panning when it was published. The complaint was that it was simply a book of speeches, without the machinery of conventional fiction. Markson's books are compilations of facts and alleged facts, very artfully.” StillsBookMatterFactsFictionNovelExampleSpeechGratefulCriticsCriticalLikesConventionalComplaintsMachineryGreat NovelsCompilationCoetzee Author:Teju Cole
“specialize in small cast/single reader long fiction so I only compete against other podcasts of novels in that form.” LongFormFictionNovelReaderCasts Author:Nathan Lowell
“Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel we're publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller's Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities - her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans - and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue.” WayHardSocialStarsFictionNovelFocusGenerationsElementsSouthWideDialogueAppealsMinoritiesAwardsFavouritePublishingStanding OutCritiqueTransKoreanOrphanProtagonistsSlumsJungPrestigiousBooksellersOffbeatBrightest Star Author:Deborah Smith
“I think I can safely call 2012 average. Overall, it was a stronger year for nonfiction than fiction - a situation that would've surprised me back in January, when I was looking forward to big new novels from several authors I really love.” ThinkingYearsI CanBigsFictionSituationNovelStrongerAverageNonfictionLooking ForwardJanuary Author:David Edelstein
“I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.” UsedFictionNovel Author:David Quammen
“These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.” KindFictionNovelSpecialDarePursueSignificanceMy SisterZombieSpecial To Me Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“What's good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.” PeopleWritingProblemFictionNovelRegions Author:Ngugi wa Thiong'o
“There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is a documentary side. But, this side is not the crux of the matter.” WorldMatterSidesFictionNovelScience FictionFantasticDocumentsDocumentariesCrux Author:Amos Oz
“One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game. No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush's Iraq War.” LongWarShowsGamesSportsWalksHalfFictionNovelFootballMadnessAbsolutesExtraordinaryIraqContemporaryLinksAppetiteFavouriteCowboyFountainIraq WarFiction WritersDallasContemporary FictionFootball GameTexanHalf TimeDallas Cowboy Author:Adam Hochschild
“The condition of visibility as it relates to black people was crucial. Connected to that, I've always been interested in science fiction and horror films and was acutely aware of the political and social implications of Ralph Ellison's description of invisibility as it relates to black people, as opposed to the kind of retinal invisibility that H.G. Wells described in his novel Invisible Man.” PeopleMenWellsKindFilmPoliticalSocialBlackFictionNovelConditionsHorrorScience FictionConnectedInvisibleRelateDescriptionCrucialBlack PeopleImplicationsHorror FilmInvisibilityVisibility Author:Kerry James Marshall
“With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.” ThinkingKnowsWantShouldLongCharacterSeemsHappensFictionNovelReaderLong TimePlotPlausible Author:Dave Barry
“People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.” PeopleWantPastFictionNovelEnglandHistoricalHistorical Fiction Author:Hilary Mantel
“Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.” WritingPleasureExistenceFictionNovelGrewPersonal ExperiencesWriting Fiction Author:Danielle Trussoni
“I think fiction allows you to inhabit new domains and it's you, the reader living in that domain for a few days that results in a deeper understanding as opposed to the novel proclaiming this is what it is right and this is what is wrong.” ThinkingUnderstandingResultsFictionNovelReaderDeeperDomainProclaimingDeeper Understanding Author:Mohsin Hamid
“In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldWayDoeIdeasDifferentAmericaYoungFictionNovelFunctionNotionEncountersPakistanWay Of Thinking Author:Mohsin Hamid
“I feel engaged with young people in Pakistan. But that said, it's still a small minority that reads novels, literary fiction. But it isn't necessarily a small minority of the wealthy elite in the city of Lahore. It can often be and I often do meet at literary festivals students who've ridden a bus 12 hours from a very small town just to hear some of their favorite writers come and speak.” PeopleFeelsSaidStillsYoungSpeakHoursCitiesFictionNovelStudentsTownsEngagedMinoritiesWealthyBusElitesPakistanSmall TownFestivalsOften IsLahore Author:Mohsin Hamid
“I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.” PeopleWayShouldWritingSaidSeemsLastsProcessFictionNovelClearStudentsMinesDegreesSentencesWriting FictionProselytizing Author:John Irving
“I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.” WritingAmericaFictionMorningNovelSeriousToughEconomicsHarderWake UpTheaterNovelistsThank GodEvery MorningNovel Writing Author:Tony Kushner
“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” LooksPersonsEyeAsksFictionNovelEmpathyThrough The EyesAnother Life Author:Barbara Kingsolver