What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure.
There's not a lot of good content to write about when you're 13 years old, so you just have to kind of fake it.
Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.
The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.
It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds.
Fiction writing is just an excuse to go discover interesting things.
The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.
I have to believe everything I write is brand new and I'm writing in this way about these people in a completely new situation for the very first time.
I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.
I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel.
