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Everybody should read fictionโฆ I donโt think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that wonโt educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And itโs not just that mechanics and plumbers donโt read literary fiction, itโs that doctors and lawyers donโt read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesnโt trust art.
Percival EverettWith fiction, you are creating an imaginary world. And it can be a very mechanical process. In a fictional film, you create the characters who become "real people" when facing the camera. When you stop shooting, they change their costumes and become someone else. And people tend to believe in documentary more than fiction. Even if the fiction is based on a true story, everybody will say, "Oh, they're only actors."
Mano KhalilI 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.
Sara ParetskyYou can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And one day, in the thick of this, approaching some partial vision, you will (I swear) find yourself on the receiving end of - of all things - an "idea for a story," and you will, God save you, start thinking about writing some fiction of your own. Then you will understand, in what I fancy might be a blinding flash, that all this passionate thinking is what fiction is about, that all those other fiction writers started as you did, and are laborers in the same vineyard.
Annie DillardA non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end.
Chaim PotokTo be perfectly frank: I don't write women's fiction. I write intimate, gritty, realistic, character-driven fiction that happens to be thrown into the women's fiction category.
Jillian MedoffOne of the primary differences for me between fiction and poetry is that fiction uses every sort of tool that poetry does but hides it much, much more. Fiction doesn't necessarily reveal what it's doing with rhythm and sound and patterning.
Brian EvensonI have always been intensely uncomfortable with the idea of a science fiction writer as prophet. Not that there haven't been science fiction writers who think of themselves as having some sort of prophetic role, but when I think of that, I always think of H.G. Wells - he would think of what was going to happen, and he would imagine how it would happen, and then he would create a fiction to illustrate the idea that he'd had. And no part of my process has ever resembled that at all.
William GibsonI think it's important to humanize history; fiction can help us remember. A lot of books I've read in the past have been so much more important than textbooks - there is an emotional connection with one particular person. I'm very much of a research-is-important type of fiction writer, even for contemporary fiction. I wrote about blogs in America and I've never blogged. But I read many, many blogs - usually about feminist things, or about race, or about hair.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieThere's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.
Michael CunninghamI could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.
Jean M. AuelExternal realities - worlds of politics, economics, law, war, interpersonal and social relations - are part of prose fiction. Fiction also includes the realities of a character's interior language. Poetry can encompass the same realities, but in compressed, intensified language, which creates entirely different degrees of emotional force.
Lawrence JosephI don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.
Kage BakerRight up till the 1980s, SF envisioned giant mainframe computers that ran everything remotely, that ingested huge amounts of information and regurgitated it in startling ways, and that behaved (or were programmed to behave) very much like human beings... Now we have 14-year-olds with more computing power on their desktops than existed in the entire world in 1960. But computers in fiction are still behaving in much the same way as they did in the Sixties. That's because in fiction [artificial intelligence] has to follow the laws of dramatic logic, just like human characters.
Walter Jon WilliamsI read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.
Peter BenchleyThe gospel is fiction when judged by the empire, but the empire is fiction when judged by the gospel.
Walter BrueggemannThere is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.
Flannery O'ConnorI'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.
Chuck PalahniukFilms are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.
Philip Seymour HoffmanAs a fiction writer you train yourself to think about situations subjectively. I don't really care for narratives that are just A, B, C, D, and then E. I like the aura that fiction has, how it can conjure up dream imagery. It's a sort of emotional speculation that you can shape and work with.
Oscar HijuelosFiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile.
Jerry B. JenkinsI think if you looked at the kind of ebb and flow of supernatural fiction and horror fiction, it does seem to be more popular in times when were hammered over the head daily with threats from all angles, very real threats.
Michael KorytaThat is as true for fiction or non-fiction. The writer has to really know their subject. It is really important to remember that the readers are a lot smarter than the writer. Also, good writing has to do with rewriting. You will never get it right the first time. So you rewrite and rewrite again until you get it right. Until you, and the reader, will be able to visualize what you're writing about.
Michael ScottThere are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.
Vladimir NabokovI love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in.
Porochista KhakpourI loved literary science fiction. In fact, as a kid, when I was reading science fiction, I thought 'I can't wait for the future when the special effects are good' to represent what was in these books by Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Jack Vance.
Matt GroeningDave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction...it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice.
Elissa SchappellAnd I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.
Justin CroninWhen 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 JulySome people just don't seem to understand the concept of fiction. It is fiction; it ain't true, folks
Laurell K. HamiltonIf you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.
Albert BrooksI don't always want to read serious fiction. But when I read fiction that's not serious, I don't want to read brain candy. Entertain me, for God's sake.
Dorothea Benton FrankI have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.
Jean M. AuelLiterature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
Vladimir NabokovI read a fair amount [of science fiction], and you know it was certainly inspirational. I have to pinch myself to think that we might be able to make some of [what I've read in science fiction books] come true.
Richard BransonFiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.
Yann MartelTo be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. Although I know that most - that many science fiction writings have been anti-utopias. And the reason for that is that it's much easier and more exciting to write about a really nasty future than a - placid, peaceful one.
Arthur C. ClarkeScience fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasnโt excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.
Walter MosleyI never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.
Elizabeth HandNarrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema veritรฉ is film in its purest form. You're taking random images and creating meaning out of random images, telling a story, getting meaning, capturing something that's real, that's really happening, and render this celluloid sculpture of this real thing. That's what really separates the power of doc filmmaking from fiction.
George HickenlooperThere is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth than the other; that the distance has perhaps to do with distance - narrative distance - from the characters; it has to do with the kind of voice that is talking, but it certainly hasn't to do with the common distribution between fact and imagination.
E. L. DoctorowI love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.
Isabel AllendeIf contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it
Warren EllisI think there's over-telling sometimes, in fiction. For instance, I'm a big fan of horror movies, but I could always lose the last third of them. There's the brilliant exciting scary thing that's going on, and then they have to show you the monster, and the monster turns out to be a giant spider from space and then you push it over and it's dead. It becomes mortal and it has human needs and it always sort of feels like a shame. Maybe because of all the cop shows and such, we're a generation that needs to have problems solved for us in fiction.
Evie Wyld