James Wolcott Quotes

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.

Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.

In my mind, there's not a great difference between what people call fiction and non-fiction. So in that sense, I'm like an early-18th-century person. I actually believe there's one way of writing.

I have this long-running idea that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is not just, 'Did it happen or didn't it happen?' It's one of form.

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

I don't know what that line is between fiction and non-fiction that other people have in their minds, but to me, when I'm writing, it's just like whatever the next sentence should be is the next sentence. It's not this artificial division.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

You become a great writer by writing.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

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.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

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.

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?