“I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.” ThinkingWayWritingSeemsFictionToo MuchTroubleBest ThingsPoetry IsNon FictionGears Author:Erica Jong
“Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction.” WayWritingWellsDifferentVoiceFictionKnownPlotEntityWriting FictionTimelines Author:Alice Sebold
“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.” IfsThinkingKnowsWayWritingCharacterFictionDisbeliefWriting FictionSuspensionFabricateSuspension Of Disbelief Author:Marilynne Robinson
“As a fan of science fiction and as a kid who loves monsters, science fiction movies and this, that and the other, there's no real way to make a career out of that. Especially when I grew up.” WayRealKidsFictionCareersFansGrewGrew UpScience FictionMonstersScience Fiction Movie Author:Kevin Grevioux
“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.” KnowsWayFeelsWritingKindMovingLinesPleasureLevelsSecretFictionFocusCapableWoodsMoving ForwardRoughBuilderCathedralsCaterpillarsRough Drafts Author:Karen Russell
“I don't think "I'm going to publish this as fiction" but I think "I'm going to tell this story to a friend" and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it's already happened.” ThinkingWayMindStoriesFictionHappenedPretendingPublish Author:Ben Lerner
“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
“In some ways, I think "Pulp Fiction" hurt cinema in a very, very minor, small way. It did a massive amount of good. But it also made it impossible to make a movie even remotely like it without someone comparing it to "Pulp Fiction".” ThinkingWayMadeHurtFictionImpossibleAmountMade ItCompareCinemaMassiveMinorsPulp Author:Roger Avary
“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.” KnowsWayHardSeemsWinningFictionStrangeHard WorkJournalistPrizeUnbelievable Author:Jennifer Egan
“At times of crisis or distress, it's poems that people turn to. (Poetry) still has a power to speak to people's feelings, maybe in a way that fiction, because it works in a longer way, can't. There's a little bit of your brain that mourns and grieves that you're not writing poetry, but actually as long as I'm writing something, I'm happy.” PeopleWayWritingLittlesLongStillsFeelingsTurnsSpeakBitsBrainFictionLittle BitCrisisGrievingDistressMournWriting PoetryTimes Of Crisis Author:Blake Morrison
“"Hard" science fiction probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism.” WayHumansKindMeanIdeasHardPastValuesFictionFantasyEnvironmentTestsScience FictionHistoricalSignificantAlternativesTensionHistorical FictionExposedRealismNoveltyPermanenceDiversionHuman ValuesPertinentNew Environment Author:Jack Williamson
“Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.” WayGivingLastsFictionAccountsNailsStop Time Author:Rebecca West
“The human mind shows an urge to capture into fixed forms through unreal assumptions, that is, fictions, that which is chaotic, always in flux, and incomprehensible. Serving this urge, the child quite generally uses a scheme in order to act and to find his way. We proceed much the same when we divide the earth by meridians and parallels, for only thus do we obtain fixed points which we can bring into a relationship with one another.” WayMindHumansChildrenUseShowsEarthFormOrderFictionFixedAssumptionUrgesServingHuman MindCaptureDividesSchemesParallelsChaoticUnrealFlux Author:Alfred Adler
“I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way.” ThinkingWayFilmFictionImagineReaderImagine ThatScreenwritersFiction WritersCinematicWatchers Author:Miranda July
“There are people you do not want to upset in the world - the politically disenfranchized who feel they have nothing to lose, those who feel that the time has come for revolution ... then out on the edges beyond any of those are science fiction fans whose favorite show has been canceled in an untimely way.” PeopleWorldWayWantFeelsHas BeensShowsLosesFictionFansRevolutionScience FictionEdgesUpsetNothing To Lose Author:Neil Gaiman
“If I would had been born years earlier, I would have been in all the Westerns. It's just the way that the industry goes. But now, we are in an age of a lot of different kinds of fears, and you have the science fiction and horror genres doing our morality plays the same way that they would have done in Westerns. I absolutely accept it. In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.” IfsWayYearsKindHas BeensDifferentDonePlayAgeBornFictionAcceptingFantasyPaintingIndustryMoralityHorrorScience FictionGenreAbstractDifferent KindsHorror GenreAbstract Painting Author:Lance Henriksen
“Through reproductive technology, postmodernist art dispenses with the aura. The fiction of the creating subject gives way to a frank confiscation, quotation, excerptation, accumulation, and repetition of already existing images. Notions of originality, authenticity, and presence... are undermined.” WayGivingArtFictionTechnologySubjectsCreatingNotionAuthenticityOriginalityFrankQuotationsRepetitionAccumulationAuras Book:On the Museum's Ruins Source: On the Museum's Ruins
“I realized that for fantasy and science fiction, especially from my youth, white was the default. Luke Skywalker was in the lead, or even if you were a hobbit, you're going to be white. That was an extremely old-fashioned, obviously really narrow-minded way to look at things.” IfsWayLooksWhiteFictionFantasyYouthScience FictionI RealizedOld FashionedDefaultLukeNarrow-minded Author:Brian K. Vaughan
“Usually at the core of fiction that has some element of the absurd there tends to be an examination of some societal ills that we should talk about more than we do. And it's funny, of course, so we have that release valve with absurdism. It offers us a safe way to explore difficult subject matter.” WayShouldMatterCoursesDifficultFictionSubjectsOffersSafeElementsCoreAbsurdReleaseExaminationSubject MatterValveDifficult Subjects Author:Laurie Foos
“I guess...on one hand, I spent way too much time watching science fiction and reading science fiction when I was growing up. But a part of it is I also never felt much of a connection to the world in which I lived while I was growing up, and so, oddly enough, I think I felt a lot more connected to the worlds that I read about in science fiction.” ThinkingWorldWayEnoughHandsReadingFeltFictionGrowing UpToo MuchGrowingConnectionsScience FictionConnected Author:Moby
“Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.” ThinkingWayWritingKindStoriesBehindsFictionMaskLiarsBe KindStorytellerWriting FictionWeavers Author:Edwidge Danticat
“Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought.” PeopleWayHardEnoughLyingFictionFloatingGranny Book:Maskerade: (Discworld Novel 18) Source: Maskerade: (Discworld Novel 18)
“...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.” ThinkingWorldWayWantFeelsWritingBelieveWellsKindStoriesDreamMightFictionFantasyAudienceReaderIntelligentScience FictionPrivilegeTalesHonourOpen MindedScience Fiction And Fantasy Author:Orson Scott Card
“For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail.” ThinkingWayWritingWellsKindTwoFactsHouseDifferencesFictionFailingWrittenNew YorkExampleBuildingBrokenSummerTablesGreenWinterExperimentsMessMaking A DifferenceJournalBroken DownVermontShackLeviathan Author:Paul Auster
“It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.” PeopleThinkingWayKindImportantStoriesBehindsFictionDoorsTraditionInventionRealisticFormalRealistic Fiction Author:Jess Walter
“For me, it's a way to find a fiction within a fiction. To find a way to uncover that blunder within the "lie," because when you look closer, every "lie" - and I say that with quotation marks - can be much more complicated. Because that is what fiction is: it's probably the least important thing in the world. It's rich, but it is put-on, it passes the time. It borrows from the world, but it does not invent it.” WorldWayLooksDoeImportantLyingFictionRichMarkImportant ThingsComplicatedQuotationsBlundersQuotation Marks Author:Sergio Chejfec
“The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department.” WayWritingFirstsLongHas BeensStoriesThreeFictionRiversBottomSentencesResistanceMy WayDepartmentEditorsShort StoryPrintedNew YorkersObjectionsOne Sentence Author:Jamaica Kincaid
“Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.” WayWritingMomentsFictionFailingCreationReaderIdealsTasksUtopianInsufficiency Author:Lauren Groff
“Now that I no longer feel lonely, and now that my own past feels resolved in a whole new and very deep way, I am excited to write about the real world, to stay in it. Fiction is an escape, a parallel life, and it was a powerful source of comfort for me when my own life was raw and uncomfortable. I don't feel the burning need to disappear into a fictional character these days.” WorldWayNeedsFeelsWritingRealWholeCharacterPastMy OwnPowerfulFictionSourceComfortLonelyExcitedDisappearBurningThese DaysUncomfortableReal WorldParallelsMy Own LifeVery DeepFeeling LonelyFictional CharacterParallel Lives Author:Kate Christensen
“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
“I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.” WayArtSaidBehindsFictionPoetTruth IsJokesFiction WritersCorrectingManicWriters And Poets Author:T.C. Boyle
“I think the MFA programs have had a real effect on the state of American fiction, but I don't think it's a question of "this is written by someone with an MFA, and this isn't." I challenge anyone to identify a book in that way. It's totally impossible.” ThinkingWayBookRealStatesChallengesFictionImpossibleWrittenEffectsProgram Author:Chad Harbach
“The first time I took a fiction writing class was sophomore year. And I just found myself taking that extremely seriously, in a way that I didn't take anything else seriously. So I guess that was the start of it.” WayWritingYearsFirstsFoundFictionClassFirst TimeFiction WritingSophomoreSophomore Year Author:John Brandon
“The biggest experiment there - and I was convinced for a really long time that it was going to fail horribly - had to do with this weird thing I do every now and then. Like everyone else, as a reader there are certain things that really rub me the wrong way in fiction - pet bugbears, let's call them.” WayLongCertainFictionFailingReaderLong TimeConvincedExperimentsPetNow And ThenWrong WayWeird ThingsReally Long Author:Roy Kesey
“This is one of the ways fiction is more liberating than nonfiction - I don't have to be so concerned with fact. I had the paradigm of certain people in my head who became my characters, but I never considered these people to be from a "certain sector of society," unless we agree that we're all from certain sectors of society.” PeopleWayCharacterFactsCertainFictionConcernedAgreeNonfictionLiberatingParadigm Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“My own sense is that fiction is inching its way over to join poetry on the cultural margin. It's an area of passionate concern for me, as for many people, but it's nowhere near as central to the culture as it used to be.” PeopleWayUsedCultureMy OwnFictionAreasConcernPassionateUsed To BeMargins Author:Matthew Specktor
“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
“A lot of people who want to see the short story have a renaissance of readership - they tend to think of short stories, and sometimes poems too, as being well-suited to the way we now live, with all of these broken-up bits of time. I hope they're right, but my sense is that our fiction reading has become, if anything, more cherished as a kind of escape from fragmentation.” PeopleIfsThinkingWayWantWellsKindSometimesStoriesReadingBitsFictionBrokenShort StoryRenaissanceBroken UpReadershipFragmentation Author:Lorin Stein
“Regarding fiction, our concern shouldn't be the author's origin (and of course I am forgetting the sales people right here), because that is actually merely a simplified, almost insulting judgment of the book by its cover - or rather by the name and origin of its author - an act of discrimination if we want to say it in a more provoking way, but at the least an act of ignorance and false empathy.” PeopleIfsWayWantBookCoursesNamesForgetFictionIgnoranceJudgmentEmpathyConcernDiscriminationProvokingInsultingSales People Author:Sasa Stanisic
“As a writer, I was deliberately creating an alternate world, and then populating it with experiences and people that I knew in this world, but I'd shake up the mix considerably. And about the same time that the memoir was becoming the dominant popular literary form in the mid to late 90s, I started reading writers who were deliberately playing with the notion of "truth" and "fiction" - that struck me as a much more interesting way to tell certain stories, particularly in the realm of comedy.” PeopleWorldWayStoriesFormCertainReadingInterestingFictionComedyThis WorldBecomingLateCreatingNotionMemoirRealmsShakesDominantInteresting Ways Author:Kevin Keck
“The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.” IfsWayFeelsFeelingsFictionIdentityThemeOutsiders Author:Dan Chaon
“In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books.” WayFirstsBookFallFictionConversationFalling In Love Author:Dan Chaon
“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
“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.” PeopleKnowsWayMeanRealCountryStoriesFictionClassMilitaryExampleIdentityDramaExcitingScience FictionWho We AreCopExploringReal YouGood ScienceFiction Stories Author:Ethan Hawke
“Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.” IfsThinkingWayMadeIdeasStoriesWantedRealizingFictionModelsGenreGood IdeasNonfictionScholarEssaysInstructorsBack In The Day Author:John D'Agata
“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.” IfsThinkingKnowsWayYearsHumansFactsLastsTurnsCoursesDifficultFictionProgressTaughtProjectsScientistClaimsRelationScience FictionHuman LifePaceUnderestimateScopeWay Of ThinkingTaught UsSingularityScientific Progress Author:George Pattison
“I was only eight when Sputnik was launched, and at that age the boundary between science and fiction is pretty blurry. Whichever way the process ran, I've been a fan of science and SF ever since.” WayAgeProcessFictionFansEightBoundariesRanBlurrySputnik Author:Edward M. Lerner
“I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of Mann's and Aschenbach's sexuality), I use philosophical sources (but not in the way many Mann critics do, where the philosophical theses and concepts seem to be counters to be pushed around rather than ideas to be probed), and I use juxtapositions with other literary works (including Mann's other fiction) and with works of music.” WayIdeasUseSeemsFictionSourceConceptsAppreciateConnectionsPhilosophicalCriticsIncludingSexualityHelpfulBiographiesNuanceThesisJuxtapositionLiterary Works Author:Philip Kitcher
“The variety within Mann's fiction is impressive and fascinating. But Joyce is even more various and many-sided. He begins his career with a wonderful sequence of bleak studies about the ways in which human lives can go awry - in my view, Dubliners is underrated.” WayHumansViewsFictionCareersStudyWonderfulVariousVarietyHuman LifeFascinatingSequenceImpressiveBleakUnderratedJoyce Author:Philip Kitcher
“I think we need to always mimic reality in our fiction. I think that we can stir things up and reveal a truth beneath the surface in that way as well.” ThinkingWayNeedsWellsRealityFictionTruth IsSurfaceBeneath The Surface Author:Christopher Rice