I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.
I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.
In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don’t have a ton of options as an actor who’s been on a science fiction show for 8 years.
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
Science fiction was never my thing. I have no interest in it.
Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that’s not reality, it’s just another aesthetic form of fiction.
One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.
I did one sci-fi movie. I did ‘Gattaca.’ I liked ‘Gattaca’ because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.
With science fiction I think we are preparing ourselves for contact with them, whoever they may be.
Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.
Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I’ve had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I’ll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I’d like to get it finished some day.
Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.
I send all my short fiction to ‘Ontario Review’ because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she’s fantastic.
In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn’t be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.
Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
I love painting and music, of course. I don’t know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I’ve certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn’t read it until I was in my late 20s.
I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it’s a poem, it’s almost written in my head somewhere.
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head.
It’s such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It’s hard for fiction to compete with that.
The claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?
It’s not highly intellectual material. I’m dedicating it to the pulp fiction of the past.
Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn’t fiction at all.
Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.
It’s hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people’s civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.
It is the creator of fiction’s point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.
I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they’re the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters.
Starring in a science-fiction film doesn’t mean you have to act science fiction.
I was raised on comic books, and I love science fiction.
I hardly read fiction; I mostly read nonfiction. I like to examine material things.
Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.
Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen.
Ironically, in today’s marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.
As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.
I have always distrusted memoir. I tend to write my memoirs through my fiction. It’s easier to get to the truth by not claiming that you are speaking it. Some things can be said in fiction that can never be said in memoir.
There’s more fiction in my life than in books, so I don’t bother with them.
So I wrote what I hoped would be science fiction, I was not at all sure if what I wrote would be acceptable even. But I don’t say that I consciously wrote with humour. Humour is a part of you that comes out.
If you write fiction, you’re by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don’t have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you’re not lonely anymore.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
I’m a fan of short horror fiction… in fact, the most memorable horror I’ve read is of the short variety… but I have a hard time pulling it off myself.
I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.
I can’t read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.
I’ve seen a lot of the United States, having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It’s such a strange and fascinating country, and instead of learning about it through a textbook, I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.
I think Junior is certainly a science fiction premise as is Twins, as is Dave, beyond Ghostbusters.
Creating the fictional background for a game world isn’t significantly different from creating a background for fiction.
I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it’s the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.
It’s great to be able to work on some science fiction. I love the genre.
I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.
I don’t read ‘chick lit,’ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.
Science fiction made me aware of how big and strange the universe was, leaving aside the whole question of aliens.
Most near-future fictions are boring. It’s always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy.
Science fiction writers aren’t fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.
The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages.
The interesting thing about fiction from a writer’s standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.
Fiction is very important to me. It’s what I do, it’s what I do with my life.
When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.
I think most fiction focuses on uncomfortable settings because that’s interesting.
A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper.
In ‘Cosmicomics,’ I came close to science fiction – I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system.
