On Writing Fiction Quotes

If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.

I love writing fiction - you can take just what you want from a place, and leave the rest.

I didn't lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.

It's part of a cycle of stories I'm writing where I deconstruct classic science fiction.

I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.

With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.

At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

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

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

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.

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

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

My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

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

My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.

Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction.

I have to have music as a soundtrack to writing fiction. I listen to it at other times, too, but it helps me write.

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

I love stories, but writing fiction is another craft and I don't feel as if I have it.

The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

It's much harder when you're writing about your life, than when you're writing fiction.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.

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.

When I'm writing about reality, I'm writing about death. When I'm writing fiction, I'm writing about life.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

I was writing fiction steadily, but I found that the stark determinisms of code were a welcome relief from the ambiguities of literary narrative.

It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.

[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.

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.

I've been writing fiction as long as I've been writing poetry. It's just that the poetry took off, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write a story.

I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

Fiction writers can’t be trusted. They make things up.

I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.

Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!

On Stranger Than Fiction, the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.