Quotes About Fiction

I love all of the Marvel comics movies.

Comics are cool. I read 'Batman' and 'Spawn'.

I tend to stay away from the comics.

I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.

A novel compared to film writing can allow the author to be more indulgent, and that extends to the characters and the story being told.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

You don't know reality until someone makes a fiction of it. Reality needs the completion of fiction.

When you're reading, like, a character's thoughts, or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me, that's what the whole point of fiction is.

When you write something you know, you're making a story that will work, whether or not there's bits taken. It's always funny to me when people say, 'Well, it's clearly autobiographical,' and I say, 'Well, how do you know my autobiography?' Certainly, there are things that are connected, but I just think it's a very interesting assumption.

I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

I surround myself with fantastical things because it makes it a little easier to write fantastical stories.

Forget romantic fiction, a survey has found that most women would rather read a good book than go shopping, have sex, or sleep.

Reading, like writing, was a survival strategy when I was young because these were ways of feeling that my world could be much larger than it actually was. It was inevitable that I would end up writing sci-fi or fantasy.

Without its roots in reality, I don't think escapism can survive.

Many of my favorite survivors in fiction show that it may not be the most muscled, macho or mighty people who pull through. A strong mind and body aren't always enough. You might also need a resilient heart.

What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don't know which bits are true.

You have to be able to invest in your own creations, to suspend your own disbelief in order to be able to write them. We all have to draw the line somewhere.

Usually when I mention suspended animation, people will flash me the Vulcan sign and laugh.

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.