Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write

I don't think I wrote stories down when I was young, but I certainly made them up, perhaps sometimes losing track of the border between reality and make-believe.

There's many times this year I've sat back and thought, I'm making a living from making things up. It's the only skill I have so I've been really lucky.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

There are very few people who are creative and imaginative. Therefore, fiction is difficult for people to embrace.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.

I've always toyed around with creating over-the-top lady characters in my head.

Even as a little kid, I told lots of stories, and I wrote them down, and I loved reading fiction and fantasy.

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts.

I write as if I've lived a lot of things I haven't lived.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

Truth maybe stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.

The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.

Now, what sort of person would write a scene where a young man stumbles upon a castle full only of beautiful young women? Answer: ME!

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.