Fictional Storytelling Quotes

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.

I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.

There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.

Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

Literature is about telling stories.

I like to read fiction best and I like to write fiction, too.

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is a documentary side. But, this side is not the crux of the matter.

I am thoroughly tired of the fable style of narrative and shall do my best to get up something entirely different and possibly little more worthy.

For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

Life has no plot, why must films or fiction?

The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?

Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

I've often found, as I did with 'Bourne,' where I was inspired by the events of Iran-Contra when I designed the CIA for the 'Bourne' franchise, that the reality of how things work is usually more compelling than the superficial, made-up version that Hollywood sometimes does.

I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.

A kid who has just started to lie is taking the first step as a storyteller.

Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.