Quotes About Fiction

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

I write about the men you want to read about but don't necessarily want to be married to.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.

Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.

I'm just writing a story that I want to read.

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

I spend most of my time reading non-fiction of all sorts. Then poetry. Then fiction to blurb. Then fiction I want to read.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

People want movies to be one thing or another; they want it be fact or fiction.

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.

It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy.

Why do I love writing? I can be who I want, do what I want, hurt who I want, and make the world over, just the way I'd love to have it.

Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.

You know, it's hard as a writer to lose characters (and actors) you like. You really don't want them to die because you're not going to get to see them anymore.

The reason I never want a book to end is that I start to feel like the characters are my friends. I'll miss them when they're gone.

Besides, who wants to read about success, anyway? Successful serial murderers, maybe.

People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real.

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

I've read Flowers in the Attic and The Other Side of Midnight and Go Ask Alice and I don't want to read any more books where the girl dies in the end.

All my religious beliefs are based on Star Wars.

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.