Quotes About Fiction

Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire.

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.

I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.

Characters are story. And any great plot or subplot is driven by the characters' wants and desires.

The desire to confess ... lies at the root of most fiction writing.

If you have a dream, just lie about it. Lie your way unto your dreams.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

Many stories begin with a dream, but it is rare when the dream is the story itself.

…my books are derived from city images, and the city of my dreams or nightmares is Mexico City. (The Art of Fiction, No. 68. The Paris Review, No. 82, Winter 1981.)

Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

You read about somebody, and it doesn't really matter whether or not they really exist - the point is that you get into them like real characters.

When you play a person who exists in real life, it is different than when you play fiction.

I write largely plot-driven stories.

After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.

When you find you don't like a character, you just type four letters and he's dead.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

Watch out, or I'm liable to put you in a story.

You have to take some dramatic license just to make it entertaining sometimes.

Every edit is a lie.

The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.

It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.