Best fiction & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 8

“I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the magazine Double Room for that reason (contributors have to write about their ideas on the prose poem/flash fiction).”

People Thinking Want Writing Stills Ideas Reason Term Interesting Rooms Fiction Magazines Prose Distinction Flash Contributors

Author:Matthea Harvey

“It is true that I didn't write any poetry between 1995 and 2011. The reason for this was probably because I had stayed away from fiction for so long and couldn't tear myself away from it.”

Writing Long Reason Fiction Tears Poetry Is

Author:Yuriy Tarnawsky

“I think I view myself primarily as a fiction writer. Poetry is more of a "hobby," a time of rest from the hard work of writing fiction.”

Thinking Writing Hard Views Fiction Hard Work Poetry Is Hobbies Fiction Writers Writing Fiction

Author:Yuriy Tarnawsky

“When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance.”

Writing Trying Different Reality Voice Fiction Creating Performances Casts Spells Writing Fiction

Author:Darryl Pinckney

“In the first 27 years of my life, I never had written a single non-technical word. I went to engineering college and went to business school. I never knew I could write fiction of any form.”

Writing Years Firsts School Form Fiction Written College Engineering Business School

Author:Karan Bajaj

“With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.”

Want Writing Book Hands Forget Fiction Be Good Good Writing

Author:Cheryl Strayed

“You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.”

Writing Fiction Memoir Writing Fiction

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.”

Writing Made Happens Fiction Accounts Writing Fiction Swiss

Author:William S. Burroughs

“I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.”

Writing Littles Fiction Little Things Buttons Intrigued Fiction Writers Vignettes

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer.”

Writing Wells Littles Book Remember Fiction Taken Poet University Collections Texas Fiction Writers Austin Borges University Of Texas

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.”

Thinking Want Feels Writing Trying Book Ends Feelings Fiction Realistic Fixing Realistic Fiction

Author:Jacqueline Woodson

“I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story.”

Writing Littles Stories Wanted Reading Fiction

Author:Emily Giffin

“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

“Speed is not an indicator of quality in terms of fiction. That's true of one's relative slowness or swiftness - taking 10 years to write a book or taking 10 days to write a book (or a comic or a film or an angry postcard) guarantees nothing in terms of how good or how bad that story is.”

Writing Years Book Stories Film Term Fiction Quality Angry Speed Comic Guarantees Relative Indicators Slowness Postcards Swiftness

Author:Chuck Wendig

“Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.”

“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

“Stephen King writes mass fiction but gets reviewed by the New York Times and writes for the New Yorker. Critics say to me, "Shut up and enjoy your money," and I think, OK, I'll shut up and enjoy my money, but why does Stephen King get to enjoy his money and get reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Book Review?”

Thinking Writing Doe Book Enjoy Fiction New York Kings Mass Critics Sunday Reviews Shut Up New York Times New Yorkers Book Review

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“In a way, I see my fiction as having moved in that direction - and the characters as dealing simultaneously with their personal history and with the present in which they are trying to make their way. So that the books are simultaneously about public and interior events. And I am having a great time getting confused and crazed writing about them.”

Way Writing Trying Book Character Fiction Events Moved Confused Interiors Great Times Personal History

Author:Frederick Busch

“Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.”

Writing Persons Book Matter Today Fiction Creative Noses Non Fiction Creative Person Matter Of Time

Author:Paul Kane

“My work is very eclectic. I write books that range from writing fiction, writing fable where I am very directly trying to imagine alternate worlds, to writing about [Buckminster] Fuller who was the ultimate world man creating all sorts of alternate worlds and believing that they were imminent to my own work of - for instance, a project that I've been working on for some year and a half, two years now that continues to evolve has been what I call Deep Time Photography.”

“I had two competing ambitions when I was a child: I wanted to be a Scientist and Discover Great Things, but I also wanted to be an Author and Write Great Things. I've always tried to combine the analytical with the creative, to some extent or another, because I find it hard to do one without the other. I've worked as a tech journalist, social media consultant, and now am self-publishing fiction.”

Writing Children Two Self Hard Wanted Social Fiction Creative Media Ambition Scientist Social Media Great Things Journalist Publishing Competing Consultants

Author:Suw Charman-Anderson

“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.”

People Writing Problem Fiction Novel Regions

Author:Ngugi wa Thiong'o

“I don't go out of my way to write Weird Fiction, or in any other genre. Some of my stuff easily slips into the Weird slot.”

Way Writing Stuff Fiction My Way Genre Slips

Author:Karin Tidbeck

“I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.”

People Thinking Way Writing Trying Mean Made Nations Term My Own Fiction Fantasy Written Reader Fit Lows Sticks Extremes Fantastic Labels Genre Categories Discussing Reviewers Cooties

Author:Karin Tidbeck

“[Michael] Chabon, who is himself a brash and playful and ebullient genre-bender, writes about how our idea of what constitutes literary fiction is a very narrow idea that, world-historically, evolved over the last sixty or seventy years or so - that until the rise of that kind of third-person-limited, middle-aged-white-guy-experiencing-enlightenment story as in some way the epitome of literary fiction - before that all kinds of crazy things that we would now define as belonging to genre were part of the literary canon.”

“Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet.”

People Thinking Knows Writing Fiction Written Historical Collaboration Historical Fiction

Author:Emily Barton

“I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.”

Thinking Writing Fiction Changed Worldview Writing Fiction

Author:Donald Ray Pollock

“Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.”

Writing Stuff Fiction Tongue Folds Writing Fiction

Author:Paul Beatty

“It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.”

Writing Different Views Fiction Scary Point Of View Fiction Writers Scary Things

Author:Alice Mattison

“You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.”

People World Writing Fiction Mirrors

Author:Alice Mattison

“I always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.”

Writing Bits Fiction Painting Architecture Abstract Versus Non Fiction Writing Fiction Abstract Painting

Author:Andrew Lam

“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.”

“Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.”

World Writing Firsts Seems Fiction Study Poet Criticism University Fiction Writers Disconnected Literary Criticism

Author:Robert Hass

“In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.”

Thinking Writing Use Fiction Intellectual Models Starting Discourse Procedures

Author:Susan Sontag

“One of my central approaches to writing speculative fiction is to take an absurd situation, which we presently feel is normal, and then push it to an even further absurdity. It's only in this light that we can see the reflection of the disturbing state of our present-day affairs.”

Feels Writing States Light Fiction Situation Normal Approach Reflection Affair Absurd Absurdity Disturbing Present Day Speculative Fiction

Author:Alexander Weinstein

“I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing.”

Knows Writing Use My Own Fiction Issues Unconscious

Author:Janet Fitch

“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

“As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.”

Way Writing Mind Kids Young Found Fiction Cases Blessing Hook Puppy Writing Fiction Treadmills Wavelength

Author:George Saunders

“I guess it must be a time-of-life thing, looking back and trying to make some sense of who I am and where I've been. It's a weird thing, having to give an account of yourself, to try to make sense of yourself for yourself. I'm not that old, but I have been writing fiction professionally for a long time now. I started so young and went so hard for so long. And I guess it was about feeling I had the space to look over my shoulder.”

Giving Writing Trying Looks Long Has Beens Hard Feelings Young Space Fiction Long Time Accounts Shoulders Who I Am Make Sense Looking Back Weird Things Writing Fiction

Author:Tim Winton

“The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.”

Thinking Writing Fiction Plot Outlines Plunge

Author:Dave Barry

“I really need to know where I'm going with fiction to write it in a way that at least I'm happy with. And I really think that a lot of fiction books end badly because terrific writers said, "I'll just figure it out" and plunge in, but have created so many problems that they are kind of impossible to solve. I mean, I'm talking really good writers do this and you can tell when they got to the end they either had to do something preposterous or they just don't really resolve things. So for fiction I spend a lot more time outlining and for humor I really don't do much of it.”

Thinking Knows Way Needs Writing Kind Mean Said Book Ends Problem Fiction Talking Impossible Figures Solve Resolve More Time Terrific Plunge Good Writers Outlining

Author:Dave Barry

“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

“When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.”

“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.”

Writing Pleasure Existence Fiction Novel Grew Personal Experiences Writing Fiction

Author:Danielle Trussoni

“I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the answer." It's not an op-ed.”

People Thinking Writing Answers Fiction Function Fiction Writers

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.”

World Writing Trying Desire Understanding Space Fiction Sculpture Epiphany Writing Fiction

Author:Denison Witmer

“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.”

People Way Should Writing Said Seems Lasts Process Fiction Novel Clear Students Mines Degrees Sentences Writing Fiction Proselytizing

Author:John Irving

“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 came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.”

People Writing Trying Years Said Wanted Young Process Results Fiction Fantasy Creative Particular Ten Late Adults Elsewhere Liberating Non Fiction Writing Fiction Foreseen

Author:Lloyd Alexander

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