Fiction Writers Quotes - Page 6

• That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I'm better off just making things up.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Husband, Fiction, Lasts

  Source: therumpus.net

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• 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!

  Matthew Specktor

  Writing, People, Fiction

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time.

  Chad Harbach

  Jobs, Long, Challenges

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fiction, Science Fiction

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• I am an old-fashioned storyteller. I try to make people laugh and cry. A fiction writer's duty is to entertain. If you can sneak in something profound or symbolic, so much the better.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Sneak In, People, Profound

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• 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.

  T.C. Boyle

  Fiction, Politician, Take Me

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I believe that I am some sort of fiction writer and I'm using myself in my work because I'm the person I'm most convenient to use!

  Laurel Nakadate

  Believe, Fiction, Use

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• And while dollars have little to do with it, the fiction writer should be asking the same question any capable film producer would ask: Is this scene truly necessary? It is the kind of thinking that, put into practice, results in a story with a sense of energy and direction.

  Les Standiford

  Thinking, Practice, Energy

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• A couple of hundred years from now, maybe [science fiction writers] Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl will be considered the important philosophers of the twentieth century, and the professional philosophers will almost all be forgotten, because they're just shallow and wrong, and their ideas aren't very powerful.

  Marvin Minsky

  Couple, Powerful, Years

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• People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.

  Henry Rollins

  Men, People, Fiction

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• I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.

  Ishmael Reed

  Country, Gay, Light

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• When you're not doing fiction, there's a limit to how much illustrating you can do with your work. I mean, you can do fine. There are great non-fiction writers, but people aren't necessarily going to say anything that reveals them as much as a picture might. Even their surroundings, in lot of cases, the things that meant the most to me were the things I noticed in their houses. I was always looking, as much as I was listening to them. I was looking around for clues as to why I was there.

  Miranda July

  Mean, People, House

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

  Joseph Boyden

  Needs, Fiction, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

  Lauren Groff

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• 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.

  T.C. Boyle

  Art, Fiction, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

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• 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.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Science, Fiction

  1975 'How Easy To See The Future', in Natural History, Apr.

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• The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Drama, Writing, Mean

  "Nadine Gordimer on dividing fact from fiction" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2010.

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• That's what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the entertainment of others. If they feel guilty enough, they write happy endings.

  Garry Trudeau

  Character, Writing, Entertainment

  "Garry Trudeau: What a Long, Strange Strip It’s Been". Interview with Elizabeth Gettelman, www.motherjones.com. January/february 2007.

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• If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.

  Harold Brodkey

  Reality, Illumination, Drunk

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• It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Writing, Cells

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• The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

  Daniel Levitin

  Basketball, Player, Numbers

  "Outliers: The Story of Success". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, November 18, 2008.

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• I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

  Jennifer Egan

  Mean, Thinking, Work Out

  "A life in writing: Jennifer Egan". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. May 6, 2011.

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• I came to the conclusion that I am not a fiction writer.

  Tim LaHaye

  Fiction, Conclusion

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• New fiction writers are a special breed in my estimation, and I never dreamed that so many people would be interested, but I remember being led by God

  Tim LaHaye

  People, Special, Would Be

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