Quotes About Fiction

Joker' is, of course, a character of my generation grew up with, and it's a character you know really well and have strong opinions about. He's been a larger-than-life character in fiction. He's one of these rare characters that have had such strong performances.

Mythology is a set of primitive lies that people rarely believe. This is rather different from history, which is a set of lies that people actually believe.

I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it.

In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don't know where you are going - sometimes down to the last paragraph - and that is the pleasure of it.

One of things that drives me nuts is you rarely get bad guys who are written very well.

I do think that I have a sensitivity to the depictions of maybe all minorities in literature. And I think that the experience of people who look like me is so rarely captured in big, mainstream American fiction that you tend to sort of empathize with any character of color who pops up.

People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.

I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked.

On 'Death In Paradise,' I had a CGI pet lizard and had to react to nothing, which was hideously embarrassing.

If you view history as a backdrop, set-dressing or fiction, then 'Pride and Prejudice' is hugely entertaining. My reread saw the misery of the female characters' reality. My new reaction was sadness and fury. Knowledge ruins everything!

I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF. Much of it is right-wing, reactionary crap.

As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

I read a lot of heavy literature when I'm on set, so on holiday I want to indulge in something light-hearted.

I have read the 'Divergent' series. I obviously read 'Harry Potter.'

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing - not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

I read a lot. I am an inveterate reader. I always have a novel going.

I'm a comic reader and a manga fan.

There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.