Rob Reiner Quotes

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

I like to write about things that don't reflect exactly on my life.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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 discovered that in a story I could safely dream any dream, hope any hope, go anywhere I pleased any time I pleased, fight any foe, win or lose, live or die. My stories created a safe experimental learning place.

That's one thing about fiction: you can make the world be the way you think it should be.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

There are reasons people seek escape in books, and one of those reasons is that the boundary of what can happen is beyond what we do - or would want to see in real life.

No matter what's happening in my life, I can always get lost in the romances of my characters.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

The fact that it's science fiction gives you the license to do anything you want to do.

You live vicariously through your characters.

Non-fiction is a big responsibility. Rationality. Facts. The urgent need to reflect some small aspect of reality. But fiction is a private autism, a self-referential world in which the writer is omnipotent. Gravity, taxes, and death are mere options, subject to the writer's fancy.

As a small child, I could watch anything happen and tell a story, and it was funny.

I think that fiction has a certain power.

My life isn't very racy or exciting so I make things up, tell stories. I like telling stories.

It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

Most of my interests in terms of writing are dark, so it's discordant how much I try to lock into the vibe of wherever I'm at. Inhabiting the life of the imagination is the nature of survival strategy - you build yourself little worlds to enjoy.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.