Quotes on Writing Fiction

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years I worried about money and no one asked me how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking me about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.

The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.