Anthony Doerr Quotes

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own.

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

Perhaps fantasy offers imaginative escapism more than other genres.

A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, 'Look at the world around you; learn from the people in these pages, neither quite me nor quite you, how life is lived in so many different ways.'

I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place.

We willingly enter fictional worlds where we cheer our heroes and cry for friends we never had.

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.

When we read fiction, we want to get outside of ourselves and are able to see from a perspective we haven't seen through before. That can be very powerful.

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life.

When I watch a movie, I want to be taken away into worlds that are beyond my imagination.

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.

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

I've loved the escapism of being another person, slipping into another character for a little while.

I sort of make believe. That's why I like acting. You can create or imagine anything.

Fiction can either be a mirror reflecting you back to yourself or it can be a clean pane of glass looking on the outside.

I pretty much always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was writing goofy stories when I was 7 or 8. That was what I call 'wishful-thinking writing.' I grew up in the city and always wanted a horse, but there was no way I was getting a horse. So I wrote all these stories about kids who had horses. It's still fun entering these other worlds.

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.

One of the fantastic things about books, fiction or non-fiction, is the way they give you a chance to look into different lives.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

I love theater. I love the idea that you can transform, become somebody else, and look at life with a completely new perspective. I love the idea that people will sit in one room for a couple of hours and listen.

I like writing because you can make things happen and turn out the way they never do in real life.

Personally, I read fiction, in part, because I get to spend time with people who aren't my people.

I love creating characters and becoming someone else entirely.

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.