- Equal
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- Nov 07, 2020
Fiction Writer Quotes
What novelists say about inventing the truth.
These quotes come from novelists reflecting on their own craft, including one who admits the appeal of fiction is being able to veer away when the truth gets inconvenient. Readers who enjoy Good quotes about creative work will likely appreciate this set too.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Look
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- Nov 07, 2020
I view myself as a fiction writer who just happens to write nonfiction. I think I look at the world through a fiction-writer's eyes.
- Hat
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- Nov 07, 2020
You can't be a 21st-century science fiction writer writing about Mars without doing tips of the hat to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury, to H.G. Wells, to the guys who first put it in the public imagination that Mars was an exciting place.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
I believe any fiction writer is inspired by real life.
- Preparation
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- Nov 07, 2020
Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
- Down
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- Nov 07, 2020
I wanted to be a writer, but I kind of wanted to be a fiction writer someday, like 20 - 25 years down the line. I never thought I'd write a nonfiction memoir about Iraq.
- Creative
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- Nov 07, 2020
Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he or she be journalist or essayist, to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer and all of the ideas, creative approaches, that fiction writers get a chance to use, but they have to use it in a true story.
- Best
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- Nov 07, 2020
The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.
- He
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- Nov 07, 2020
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
- Emotional
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- Nov 07, 2020
I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.
- Limits
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think part of what I like about being a fiction writer is that I can inhabit something that's beyond the limits of my own personality.
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
I went to school in California, at Stanford when I was seventeen, and I lived in San Francisco until I was twenty-three, and then I lived in Hungary for, like, a summer, and then I went to Iowa for three years. At Iowa, I actually did the fiction program, not poetry. I was a fiction writer for a long time before I was 'out' as a poet.
- Book
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- Nov 07, 2020
Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.
- Mentor
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living.
- Better
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- Nov 07, 2020
I don't believe a poet has a better hold on truth or morality than a fiction writer has. And I don't think a fiction writer has anything over a journalist. It's all about the good word, properly inserted.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020