Quotes About Fiction

'Confederate,' in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show. It's a science-fiction show. One of the strengths of science fiction is that it can show us how this history is still with us in a way no strictly realistic drama ever could, whether it were a historical drama or a contemporary drama.

The England I write about doesn't strike me as the real one.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

One of the things I strive for is realism. I need to be as real as possible in the dilemmas my characters face.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

Very few people run around and get amnesia and have comas and come out of them and do all the silly of people have strokes and have comas and come out of them and do all the silly things we do on soaps.

When I was a kid, my grandparents were Greek immigrants on my father's side. My grandfather used to read me Greek myths, in which there are a great many goddesses and stories of strong women. And I was entranced by them. Then I started reading science fiction very young, and I loved it.

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

'The Levanter' features some of the strongest action scenes to be found in Ambler - who can, in some of his fiction, stay in one place for a whole novel.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Gray space is fertile ground for fiction. When I can see both sides of an argument and feel strongly in both directions, then there's a story there, then I can write real characters that I care about and believe in and champion on both sides.

My grandfather allowed as how I might even live long enough to see a Mars landing. I haven't, of course, except in fiction, including my own, and strongly doubt that I ever will.

Every writer has characters that they become attached to and that they feel very strongly about.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.

With 'Delirium,' I had to spend time thinking about the political, social and religious structure of a different world. But it was a fun challenge.

Scripts can be slick and structured, but do they always contain the truth?

Fiction is supposed to be immersive and supposed to be entertaining and narrative, so structures have to be buried a little bit. If they come foregrounded too much, it stops being fiction and starts being poetry - something more concrete and out of time.

Speaking for myself, I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.

I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity.

It's a character I've created. Actually, that's pretty much the opposite of me, off a farm in the Midwest.

While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden.

A lot of things that I write about have happened to people around me, if not necessarily to me or in the organizations I've worked in. Having said that, it's fiction and has a lot to do with my imagination and creativity.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.