Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.

I think writing for a world one has invented can be infinitely more interesting than writing for the world we've all inherited.

I think I have a God complex, and I like moving mountains and writing stories that affect entire worlds, and it's a bit hard to do that in a contemporary setting because you have reality intruding. Whereas, when you set your own reality, you can make up your own rules and do whatever you like.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.

I don't think any book of mine will ever come as close to pure fantasy as 'A Heaven of Others.' I'll never again set a book in a world or after-world in which it's impossible to buy a cup of coffee or take an undisturbed afternoon nap.

I actually enjoy writing longer books because you have even more to get your storytelling teeth into.

Novelists should be free to write whatever they want, to let their imaginations roam as close to or as removed from reality as they see fit.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

Because you make a world that didn't exist before, and you can go into that world deeper and deeper. It's unbounded out there. One film takes you into one area, another film takes you into another area. There could be trillions, zillions of worlds that exist in the big space.

As a writer of fiction, you don't ever want to limit the characters you create to the life you've lived. That's insanity to me.

Guillermo del Toro is able to invent his worlds. I would find the pressure of having to invent crippling.

I like writing about places, about people and environments. When I create a world, it lets me go in and define the details of that world.

The idea of science fiction, mythology, and creating a world is my favourite thing. I do love the reality of dramas and playing that, but being able to start from scratch, to completely build the character and this world, I love that.

I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre.

What I like about writing novels is that I'm in my own world for nine months.

As a writer of fiction, lying is the central thing to all books.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

I read and write speculative fiction because I want to go someplace really different.

If you're building a fantasy world that exists outside of the rules of our real world, why would you write it to conform to the rules and binaries that we have today? Why still limit yourself?

I would love to focus on writing books that were not just about issues.